


Sine Nomine

by SilentAuror



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Don't copy to another site, Drama, M/M, POV: John Watson, POV: Mycroft Holmes, POV: Sherlock Holmes, Romance, Series 4 Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 10:01:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 45,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24967870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilentAuror/pseuds/SilentAuror
Summary: As Mycroft reviews the footage from Culverton Smith's morgue, he revisits his original question: whether John Watson would be the making of his brother, or make him worse than ever. He's come to a conclusion, but decides to give John one last chance. So he gives him a choice.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 262
Kudos: 559





	Sine Nomine

**Sine Nomine**

_Interesting, that soldier fellow. He could be the making of my brother. Or make him worse than ever._

Mycroft purses his lips and moves the cursor back to the start of the surveillance video, beginning it at the precise moment where John Watson rushes forward and begins to beat his brother to a bloody pulp. It’s not the first time he’s watched it. It’s not even the fortieth. He has every moment of it committed to memory, as he’s been thinking about it at regular intervals since the day it happened. He watches the scene unfold again with passive disconnection, then pauses the footage once Watson has departed, leaving Sherlock in a puddle of his own blood. 

He leans back in his chair and folds his fingers behind his head, frowning in thought. The time has come to make a decision. He’s never liked John Watson, to be quite frank. From their first meeting, Mycroft found him trying, refusing to be intimidated, refusing his bribe more as a snub than out of any genuine care for Sherlock, whom he had only just met. His nerve in asking Anthea for a date without any prior encouragement or interest having been signalled on her part, as though she didn’t know what there was to know about him, from his pitiful income to his even more pitiful state of emotional instability. The arrogance of him, thinking she might even consider saying yes.

Despite his instinctive dislike for the man, however, there were other factors to consider as well. John did pass the test in terms of having turned the bribe down, regardless of his personal motivations in having done so. He also managed to save Sherlock from that ridiculous battle of wits with the taxi driver. Mycroft had never seen Sherlock look as happy as he did that night as he walked off with his new flatmate and, seemingly – astoundingly, rather – friend. 

And that, of course, has been the entire problem from the start. Mycroft has spent virtually every moment of his life from the age of fourteen attempting to save his brother from himself, from his over-sensitivity, his emotional fragility. It very nearly killed him as a child after their psychotic sister traumatised Sherlock into a comatose state following the murder of his friend. At the age of seven, Sherlock had been so transparent, so vulnerable. Even their mother had bemoaned the fact of it in private to Mycroft, home during the holidays from school. She fretted about sending Sherlock away, postponing it until he had sufficiently recovered the following year. And in the meantime, Mycroft had done what he could to train Sherlock to shut it out, to build some personal defences. To learn that caring is a disadvantage, that friends are a liability, that sentiment is a chemical defect. To stop feeling at all. Sherlock needed to learn to protect himself, lest it happen again. It worked for a long time, or so Mycroft thought, at least until Sherlock’s naturally curious brain forayed into the world of chemical alteration and all the dangers which _it_ presented in turn. It was as though he had come into the world determined to destroy himself. Narcotics replaced emotional vulnerability for a time. Mycroft always tried not to allow himself to think that this has had anything to do with him, with his having guided Sherlock so successfully away from experiencing feelings in general. It was difficult to avoid the rather obvious conclusion that this new manner of self-destruction was a direct replacement for the other, however, and so he laboriously took on the responsibility of saving Sherlock from that, too, overseeing his treatment and generally monitoring the situation as well as he and his staff possibly could. 

And then: John Watson. From the evening following the shooting of the cab driver, Mycroft critically assessed that John’s appearance in Sherlock’s life was a positive turn of events. For the first time in his adult life, Sherlock seemed to stabilise, retaining an address for longer than a few months, his danger nights becoming less and less frequent, settling with vigour into solving crimes and proving himself genuinely rather useful. His domestic arrangement with John appeared to be the source of this steadying force, and Mycroft cautiously allowed himself to approve, though he never would have said it. While he continued to dislike John and John’s sneering bare-tolerance for him in return, he could see that what they had in common was a shared concern for Sherlock’s welfare. John could be reasonably relied upon to give updates on Sherlock’s condition, albeit reluctantly – though if he considered Mycroft’s request for specific information a step over certain lines regarding Sherlock’s privacy, he never hesitated to retort with a statement on what Mycroft could feel free to do with said request. Which was, again, both infuriating as well as privately satisfying. If John wanted to insinuate himself that deeply into Sherlock’s personal life, then he’d damned well _better_ have Sherlock’s best interests at heart. 

Just how far into Sherlock’s life or heart he had established himself remained somewhat inconclusive to Mycroft at the time. Possibly to all three of them, Mycroft thinks. What he realised in hindsight was that he decidedly underestimated John’s importance to Sherlock. Nothing demonstrated this more obviously than the instance of Irene Adler. He miscalculated, thought that Sherlock had fallen in love, that her falsified death had destabilised him again. He’d worried, and Mycroft loathes having to worry. With Eurus safely ensconced in Sherrinford and Sherlock more or less kept on track by the steadying influence of his irritating little soldier friend, he’d thought that the brush with Moriarty’s henchwoman might undo all of Sherlock’s progress to that date. It wasn’t even until after Sherlock’s return that Mycroft came to see it fully. Not even during the hasty preparations they made, working feverishly together on plans to attempt to outwit Moriarty, their thirteen possible solutions, did he see it, in spite of all the various things Sherlock said: _It’s imperative that John not be told. He must be seen grieving, or they’ll kill him, Mycroft. You know they will. And I cannot allow that to happen._ Or: _You must keep him safe while I’m away. He’ll… need help. And I don’t just mean money. You’ll need to check, see that he’s doing all right. Whether or not this works, whether or not I survive, it will be very difficult for him._ And finally, Sherlock’s last text to him before disappearing from Britain’s CCTV system for the following two years: _I have your word that you’ll watch over him. I will hold you to it. For now, goodbye. SH._

He’d sent it from the cemetery, glancing directly up into the nearest camera, his eyes connecting with Mycroft’s through the screen when he reviewed the footage two hours later. By that time, Sherlock was gone. Possibly forever, Mycroft knew, the thought bleak. They’d worked together more successfully than ever before in the three months leading up to Sherlock’s forced disappearance. Sherlock was always grim, though, a certain set to his mouth as they worked, formulating plans, trying to combine their intelligence to outwit the greatest criminal of their time. _He’ll target John_ , Sherlock had said, more than once. _These assassins. You know they’re not just there for me. I’ve compromised him._ Mycroft could have pointed out that the same could be said in turn, but he knew that Sherlock had never particularly cared about his own safety. They made a shortlist of people they suspected Moriarty would target, and in the end, Sherlock was correct: John Watson, Martha Hudson, and Gregory Lestrade. Neither of them ever suggested that Mycroft would make that list, and he didn’t. They never tried to pretend that their relationship was something other than what it was, yet it couldn’t be denied that it was better at that point than at any point prior. Regardless, John came first, and by a considerable margin. 

Nonetheless, it was still a surprise to Mycroft to realise the extent of it. He kept his word: he watched John Watson over those two years. Watched him struggle with depression, a tendency to drink too much (Mycroft retained a room in three different rehabilitation centres of differing levels of cost and luxury, just in case, but never ended up using any of them – assuming that John could have been prevailed upon to allow himself to be taken to one in the first place). Watched him warily accept a drinks date with the woman who would later put a bullet in Sherlock’s heart. Watched it progress to playful hints about weekends and future plans and rings, carefully seeded by Morstan. Watched John struggle with the decision, browsing no fewer than six different jewellers’ shops over a span of four weeks before finally biting the bullet and buying a ring. He’d informed Sherlock upon his return to London, naturally, giving him advance warning before he interrupted John’s reservation at The Landmark. He’d watched the information merely tighten a muscle in his brother’s jaw, determined to see John anyway, the impending proposal notwithstanding. 

He hadn’t seen it until their conversation two days later, and it had frankly alarmed him. The entire conversation, woven in and around the train spotter’s knitted hat, had essentially been Sherlock’s wholesale rejection of Mycroft’s advice to him over the course of their lives. For the first time, Sherlock not only defended the notion of having friends, but turned it around and scoffed at him for his choice _not_ to have them. He’d even used Mycroft’s own words against him, from the day at Buckingham Palace when Mycroft had strongly insinuated Sherlock’s virginity (true, at least to his knowledge) in front of John, intending to embarrass him. _How would you know?_ he’d sneered, and Sherlock had looked affronted, his childhood vulnerability returning briefly to his eyes and making him look younger than his years. Now, Sherlock had turned this back on him: _How would you know?_ he’d asked pointedly, meaning that Mycroft didn’t know what it was to have a friend and lose him, whereas Sherlock did, that he overtly regretted the loss. He’d also, in the same conversation, directly likened both of them to the train spotter. _But you’ve missed his isolation_ , he’d said, meaning Mycroft, not the man they were allegedly discussing. Mycroft had grown defensive. _I’m not lonely, Sherlock_. And Sherlock, in turn, had defended his own difference for once, rather than flinching away from any reference to it, or else responding with hostility. He’d been insulted over it all his life. _Freak. Sociopath. Who would be friends with Sherlock Holmes?_ But now he embraced it. _He’s different. So what? Why would he mind? Why would anyone mind?_ He’d claimed it, and claimed it in specific reference to John Watson, to his openly-declared desire for John’s friendship, having thought at the time that he’d lost it. 

Mycroft realised the danger afresh that day. And while Sherlock and John both seemed beamingly happy with their newfound friendship following the bomb the next evening, Mycroft went home to his darkened house to have a long, grim reflection on this turn of events. John Watson was a danger to Sherlock. He always had been. Once he had been useful in terms of keeping Sherlock balanced, grounding him. But now all of this was in jeopardy, because the loss of this friendship clearly had the power to make Sherlock question everything Mycroft had ever endeavoured to teach him about the importance of keeping himself invulnerable to other people. To allowing them to become too important. He’d not only lost his defences against John Watson, but defended having deliberately lowered them. It was a danger. And given that, one of the primary threats as of that moment was Ms Morstan and her presence in John’s life. 

_Don’t get involved_ , he’d warned, when Sherlock mused his reflections that Morstan was a serial and pathological liar. _And don’t tell John. It’s always the messenger who gets shot, Sherlock. You know that. Leave it to me._ Sherlock had agreed, seemingly relieved if anything to be spared having to scrutinise Morstan any more deeply. Mycroft was glad not to have had to convince Sherlock to keep his nose out of it, yet it nonetheless bothered him, as Sherlock’s rather undisguised motivation was quite plainly to keep the peace with John. Sherlock _should_ have suspected Morstan, far sooner than he did in the end. He allowed himself not to see it, not to see the danger that had come into his life and, much as he was in denial over it, taken his precious John away from him, out of Baker Street and all but out of his life. He’d chosen not to see it. 

Mycroft, on the other hand, had started digging well before joining Sherlock in Serbia. He began the day he first heard Morstan utter the word _ring_ on one of those dinner dates. But he hadn’t pieced together that she was the infamous Rosamunde Mary of A.G.R.A. Not then, at least. That took him much longer. He’d never spoken to her himself, or he thinks he would have recognised her voice. It was quite distinctive, even when she was assuming an accent, and his ear is rather better-trained than average. Part of his current irritation rests in the fact that he was slow to see it, himself. Nevertheless, the fact remains that John Watson unwittingly brought an internationally-wanted assassin into Sherlock’s life, via the marriage he didn’t realise he was being manipulated into proposing, and the result was a bullet in Sherlock’s heart, a bullet which Mycroft possesses to this day. It’s reposing in its evidence jar on his desk even now, bent and bloodied. Sherlock’s blood, again. Somehow it keeps coming back to this: the fact that the presence of John Watson in Sherlock’s life continues to result in the loss of Sherlock’s blood. The fact that Sherlock’s physical safety isn’t even Mycroft’s greatest concern speaks volumes further. John Watson is uniquely capable of causing damage to Sherlock, damage from which Sherlock could potentially never recover. 

The original question, he thinks, leaning back in his desk chair again, his eyes still affixed to the bullet, has surely been answered by this point: John Watson has made Sherlock worse than ever. It’s an airtight case. Sherlock has discarded his emotional armour, disregarded his need for it at all, and shows an appalling lack of survival instinct or interest in using his life to do anything other than to sustain John’s. Sherlock’s attachment to John has resulted in an enormous list of consequences, any one of which should have been enough to give Mycroft due cause to forcibly remove John from Sherlock’s life. Glaring at the bullet, he composes a mental list: Sherlock has been blackmailed into leaping to his probable death from the roof of a hospital. Sherlock has endured two years of hunting terrorists while being hunted by them himself, undergoing no fewer than three separate captures, each of which saw him beaten, tortured, and in one case, nearly starved. Sherlock has been shot in the heart – after having offered help, after having planned a wedding and graciously given his beloved John to the woman who would, one scant month later, try to kill him. Sherlock has committed murder in the plain sight of multiple witnesses, for the dual purposes of preventing John from doing it first, and to spare John from seeing his criminal wife suffer the richly-deserved legal consequences of her storied career. It was also highly possible, Mycroft reflects, that Sherlock was aware that Mary Morstan posed a threat to John himself, should he have decided to take issue with her deeply unsavoury past. For all of this truly ridiculous self-sacrifice, what Sherlock received in thanks was John’s misplaced blame for his wife’s death – blame stemming primarily, Mycroft assumes, from his guilt over the text message affair which he started and never saw through – and the loss of John’s friendship entirely. Despair from this drove Sherlock into taking advice from a woman he should have considered a natural enemy, resulting in a backslide into narcotic use, emotional wreckage, and a return with force to the suicidal tendencies of his younger days. 

Where the situation presently stands is thus: Sherlock is alone at Baker Street, clean but intensely solitary. Humbly grateful to have whatever crumbs John chooses to throw his way between the various duties of his part-time jobs and childcare obligations. Working, but on his own much of the time. Lonely. Watson, meanwhile, goes about his days with a seemingly-permanent grimness around his mouth. Neither of them ever laughs save in the presence of the other, and it is this fact alone which has stayed Mycroft’s hand thus far. The question is whether these tiny fragments of happiness counterbalance the rest of the pain that John Watson’s presence in Sherlock’s life has brought with it, whether Sherlock wouldn’t be considerably better off without John once and for all. 

The problem, Mycroft reflects, is that his brother does not possess the strength of will to make that decision for himself. He has allowed himself to become wholly dependent on John’s whims, accepting whatever amount of time or loyalty John decides to bestow upon him, and it makes Mycroft sick to see. Sherlock, he once told John, has the mind of a scientist or a philosopher. For all their many differences over the years – over the course of their lives, really – Mycroft is well aware that Sherlock’s intelligence and skills rank well above average, and to see him throw himself away on this wholly average, useless little man is infuriating. He resets the footage from the morgue and feels his jaw clench as he watches John Watson bloody his brother one more time, watches Sherlock do nothing whatsoever in his own defense. 

The time has come – is past due – to do something about this. He will give Watson one chance, Mycroft resolves, feeling his expression turn ugly as the cameras show John leaving, blood dripping from Sherlock’s face.

One final chance, and after that, no more. 

*** 

Steps at the far end of the corridor alert Mycroft: they’ve arrived. Of course; he already saw the security notification, saw them bring him in on the cameras some minutes ago. He waits, perfectly composed with his fingers arranged precisely together on his desk in front of him. The knock comes. “Yes,” he says, the word less an acquiescence than an imperative. The door opens and John Watson, scowling and somewhat dishevelled, is muscled into the room. Mycroft treats him to grimace that fails to achieve the status of an actual smile. “Leave us,” he tells the nameless agents who delivered Watson. They do. “Sit.” This is directed at John, who eyes the spare metallic number opposite Mycroft, but dutifully deposits himself onto it. 

“What is it this time, Mycroft?” he asks, twisting round to check that the agents have gone. When he sees that they have, he faces forward again, irritation marking his every movement. “I’m a busy man. I haven’t got time for these little games of yours. I thought I’d made it pretty clear that we’d finished with those.” 

Mycroft waits out the little tirade with patience, then lets a moment or two of silence spin out following Watson’s gripe. “Have you finished?” he asks, then carries on without waiting for a response. “Good. We have business to attend to.” 

John rolls his eyes. “Seriously, Mycroft, ‘business’? What business could we possibly need to discuss?” 

Mycroft picks up a remote controller and points it at the large screen mounted on the side wall of his small office, playing the footage from the start without a word, and turns his face to scrutinise Watson’s response. 

He recognises it instantly, a look of horror crossing his features, mouth opening. He looks at Mycroft, his expression somewhere between betrayal and abject guilt. “Mycroft – ” It’s a stammer, his attitude changing abruptly as the impatience and arrogance deflate in an instant. 

“Watch.” Mycroft is adamant. 

John swallows and cringingly turns his face back to the screen, his shoulders bending inward. After another sixty seconds of it, he interrupts again. “Look, Mycroft, I know what I – turn it off. Please.” 

“No.” Mycroft glances over a moment later and sees that John has averted his face, away from both him and the screen, but the audio is still playing perfectly audibly. He waits until the final exchange, _I killed his wife/Yes, you did_ , waits for the door slam to come. He’s had it memorised for months now; there’s no need for him to watch it again. He switches the footage off and allows a silence to form. “There was a time when I asked you to look after him,” he says tersely, breaking it. “You agreed. Without any manner of condition, I might add. Had you forgotten?” 

John takes a deep breath and looks down at his hands, all ten fingers flexing repeatedly. He shakes his head, just a little. “No,” he says, very quietly. 

“After having beaten my brother half to death – a death he was already very near facing, as I know that you’re equally aware, and toward which he was headed as a direct result of your callous treatment of him following that day in the aquarium, as well as out of a misguided attempt to save your life – again, I might add – you then stopped by his hospital room, a room which you knew to be an unsafe place to have left him in the first place, to leave your cane as a token of your having walked out of his life forever,” Mycroft says relentlessly. He treats John to a hard stare. “Since that day, I’ve rather wished you had.” 

John swallows hard, then nods at his hands. “I – okay. Yeah. I… deserve that.” 

“I know you do.” Mycroft is merciless. “Look at me.” 

John’s brow furrows, his face still directed down at his hands. His mouth opens again as he inhales. “Mycroft, I…” 

“ _Look at me!”_ For the first time, Mycroft allows his anger to show, and John obeys this time, his mouth clamping shut unhappily, his face stamped with wretchedness. Mycroft takes a deep breath, himself, then carries on. “When we first met, I recall having asked myself whether your presence in my brother’s life would prove beneficial or detrimental. For a good deal of time, I was inclined to the former. Now, however, it seems impossible to avoid the conclusion that it was, in fact, the latter. Listen to me: Sherlock did not kill your wife.” 

John blinks and nods. “No, I know that. I never should have – ”

“No one did,” Mycroft interrupts, cutting over the John’s cringing words. John stops, looking at him with confusion, so Mycroft repeats himself. “ _No one_ did.” 

A beat of bewildered silence passes and then John’s brain begins to function again. “Mycroft – what – I don’t understand… what do you…” 

“Just as I said,” Mycroft says coolly. “No one killed your wife. She is alive.” 

Shock registers now. “ _What?!_ ” John demands. “But – Mycroft, how can that possibly – I mean, I was there, I saw it,” John says, the words tripping over each other, his brow creased in a frown. “I was literally holding her as she died. What the _hell_ are you talking about?” 

“It was faked,” Mycroft informs him. “Just a simple ruse that anyone could have pulled. She planned it. Paid off the coroners in advance. It would have been child’s play for her. Vivian Norbury never even fired a bullet.” 

John blinks, processing this as quickly as his feeble brain can manage. “So Mary didn’t save Sherlock’s life,” he says, his lips hardly moving. 

Mycroft rolls his eyes. “I tell you that your wife is living, and _that’s_ the part you seize upon? No, she never ‘saved’ Sherlock’s life. Not either time. Certainly not when she put a bullet in his heart – a very real bullet, I might add. This one right here.” Mycroft picks up the evidence jar and rattles said bullet. “Nor did she save his life the day when she falsified her own death.” He allows himself to sneer. “Seems to be a behaviour you inspire in the people you care about. I wonder why they seem so desperate to get away from you.” 

John’s expression darkens, but rather than allowing himself the angry retort Mycroft can all but see forming in his mouth, he bows his face. “I deserve that, again,” he says, the words a bit muffled. He shakes his head. “I never should have blamed him. And God knows I never should have laid a hand on him. Not – not for any reason.” 

Mycroft studies him for a long moment. “I quite agree,” he says, his voice hard. “You owe him. How much, you don’t even know, and therefore it would be unfair to judge you for not knowing the full extent of it. I’m well aware that you still essentially consider Sherlock to be in your permanent debt, owing to his two-year disappearance and falsified suicide. You never troubled yourself much with knowing the details of any part of that, and my brother, all too anxious to mend relations, never raised the subject again. _He_ saved _your_ life.” 

The confusion returns. “How?” John demands. “How do you figure that, exactly? Do you have any _idea_ how hard those two years were for me, Mycroft? Haven’t you stolen those notes from the therapists I had back then yet, or blackmailed them into giving them to you?”

“Of course I know,” Mycroft says sharply. “I was watching. Per Sherlock’s rather explicit order. What you don’t know, and are too stubborn to ask, preferring rather to cling to your narrative of endless suffering and wallowing in self-pity and righteous indignation, is that Sherlock is the one who was blackmailed here. If he hadn’t jumped, the cost would have been your life.” 

He waits for Watson’s slower mind to register and process this information, which apparently fails to compute. “ _What?_ How so?” 

Mycroft opens the top right drawer of his desk and withdraws the top file, opens it in his own time, his movements measured, and removes three photographs. They’re all of the sniper now known to the MI5 as Roger Wilcox, a gun for hire, now in Leavenworth serving a life sentence. The shots show him through the blurry lens of the closest CCTV footage available the afternoon that Sherlock jumped, crouched and squinting into the sight of a long-barrelled rifle. He knew the precise model once, but the details never mattered so he didn’t bother retaining them. Come to think of it, John probably knows what it is. Next, he withdraws a map and slides it across the desk to interrupt John’s frowning gaze at the photos. “The red marking indicates the sniper’s location the day of my brother’s falsified suicide. Notice anything?” 

He’s quicker with this, at least. John blinks. “That’s – right by St. Barts,” he says, sounding stunned. He looks up at Mycroft. “They were there for – Sherlock?” 

Mycroft allows himself a sound of exasperation. “No. They were there for you. They would have shot you had Sherlock not been seen to jump. There was another one at New Scotland Yard, intended for Lestrade, and a third in the sitting room at Baker Street. It’s why Sherlock wanted you there: to protect both you and Mrs Hudson. He was very much aware that he couldn’t protect all three of you, but had a lackey at the Yard manufacture an errand in the basement of the building that shielded the detective inspector. You, unfortunately, returned too quickly, leaving both yourself and Martha Hudson exposed. Since you were there, Sherlock not only had to jump, but he needed his ‘death’ to be convincing to you. Your reactions were being watched, as proof. Your grief is what kept you from being shot. Furthermore, he was obliged to go on keeping his survival a secret from you, as he had no way of knowing how long the assassins would be watching. The only guarantee of your safety was to dismantle all of Moriarty’s ring. And even with my help from here in London, it nonetheless took him far longer than either of us expected.” He pauses, giving Watson a moment to absorb all this, his mouth open, eyes blinking. “He suffered,” he says bluntly. “He was taken captive more than once. Beaten. Tortured, in one instance. And in return, you would have denied him your friendship altogether, more than once since his return. You should have been grateful to find out he was alive – at the very least.” 

John is evidently struggling, still blinking hard. He looks down at his hands, which are opening and closing reflexively. “I – didn’t know. I – ”

“No, you didn’t,” Mycroft agrees. “But you understand my current position. I am therefore going to make you an offer, one which I hope you will consider thoroughly before you come to a decision.” He studies John for a moment, then goes on. “If you decide to pursue Mary, I will give you everything needed to aid you to that end: funds. Information. Travel arrangements. Anything you could possibly need or want.” 

Confusion resurfaces, temporarily flooding out the rest of John’s warring emotions and he looks up, their eyes meeting. “Why would you do that?” 

“I would do this with one condition,” Mycroft continues, allowing his expression to harden. “That, should you decide to go, you go and never return.” 

John swallows. “Never? But… why?” 

Mycroft gets up and walks away from the desk, hands on his hips, then stops and turns to face Watson. “Since my brother’s return, you have actively denied him your friendship, married a woman who would later shoot him in the heart, then went back to said woman. Sherlock shot a man specifically to spare _you_ having to suffer the consequences of said woman’s lengthy criminal history, took the full fall for it by virtue of being sent on a mission in Serbia that would have resulted in his death within months. You then blamed him for your wife’s so-called death, allowed him to take her post-mortem advice to put himself deliberately into harm’s way both by enflaming his old addiction and making himself the target of a serial killer, all for the sake of rescuing you from your own apathy and excess drinking. You then beat him half to death, left him unprotected and vulnerable in said killer’s territory, and prepared to walk out of his life without so much as a word.” He stops to take a deep breath. “You’ve now, unfortunately, met our sister. The events of our shared childhood were such that I have made it my life’s work to keep my brother from harm – at his own or anyone else’s hand. I had hoped, upon our initial meeting in that garage years ago, that your association with my brother would prove beneficial, and rather thought during those first two years that it was. Following his recall from the suicide mission in Serbia, I had actively hoped to finally lay down the burden of constantly watching out for Sherlock, hoped that you would agree to assume it. As his friend – the only real friend he’s ever had. I thought that you had, in fact, agreed to look after him. Your words did, at any rate. I hope that you can understand why I might, should you now choose to leave him again in pursuit of the woman you married, prefer that you stay gone this time. He cannot take another bout of losing your presence in his life without hope of regaining it. This would be for his own good.” 

John still doesn’t understand. “But – I would come back, if I did go,” he says. “I mean – if I went, I could always come back. It’s not like I’d have to stop being friends with him in order to go. I don’t… I don’t get why you’re saying this.” 

Mycroft sighs. He walks back to his desk chair and sits down again, bending forward to meet John’s troubled eyes. “I am asking you to allow him to move on,” he says. 

A muscle twitches in John’s jaw but he doesn’t react otherwise. “What do you mean?” he asks warily, which suggests that he already has a suspicion of where this is leading. 

Mycroft treats him to a patented look. “You know precisely what I mean. Please don’t try to tell me that you’re ignorant of the way my brother feels for you.”

This hits closer and John winces and looks away. “We’re friends,” he says, the words only just clearing a whisper. “Best friends.” 

Mycroft rolls his eyes. “Please. Spare me. Everyone who’s ever seen the two of you knows otherwise. Let’s not dance around it. I don’t know what sort of mental gymnastics it takes for you to deny your own feelings in this bizarre relationship the two of you term as being ‘best friends’, but it’s genuinely painful to observe. He loves you and you surely know it. You must. And your own feelings are just as obvious. I won’t force you to admit it, but please don’t imagine that I’m an idiot, even in this particular respect. My point is this: your presence in his life will only fuel his hope that one day, perhaps, should you ever deem him worthy, you might actually allow yourself to return his feelings. Sherlock is rather more perceptive than the average and you must know that he is almost certainly aware of the potential for feelings on your side. He likely also believes that you would never give in to them, owing to your persistent feelings of victimhood on your side as well as your general contempt for him. You make both unmistakeably clear. But as long as you’re here, in his life, he will hope. I’m given to understand that it’s simply human nature. Even Sherlock’s. So if you now choose to pursue Mary, whether or not you succeed in mounting some sort of reconciliation with her, whether or not you then choose to return to London with her – assuming you could persuade her to do so in the first place – you would then reinstate the awkward triangle that resulted in one of the least happy phases in my brother’s recent life as a permanent state. This, I will not permit. Thereby I am letting you know that, should Mary set foot on British soil and thereby the MI5’s jurisdiction, I will have her arrested at once.” He indicates the bullet again. 

John swallows. “Understood,” he says. He hesitates. “Are you – completely certain? About Sherlock, I mean? About – the way he feels? Has he… said?” 

“He’s never had to,” Mycroft informs him curtly. “It’s always been openly assumed as common knowledge between the two of us. Your survival and wellbeing have been his sole motivation since the day he was forced to jump from that rooftop, to the exclusion of all else, including his own happiness, safety, liberty, or life itself. You must understand that I cannot go on allowing your very existence to continue jeopardising him this way, throwing literally everything he possesses away in exchange for the scraps of your companionship, under the constant threat of losing it again should you deem him unworthy. You must see this.” 

“But – ” The word dislodges itself before he can help it. “You think he still… even after – ” John can’t make himself say it, but Mycroft knows what he means. 

“Yes, even after the morgue,” he says evenly. “I don’t think it’s possible for him to stop himself. Not as long as you’re still around.”

John looks down at his hands again and takes a deep, shuddering breath. He nods. “Yeah.” The word cracks. “I… God. I’m so – ” He pinches the bridge of his nose and rubs his eyes. “I wish I’d known all this sooner.”

“You always knew how you felt about him,” Mycroft says unrelentingly. “Yet you’ve always denied him that. You’ve always known how he felt. Yet you allowed him to plan your wedding, forced him to stand by while you married the assassin who would put a bullet in his heart the day you returned from your honeymoon with her.” He bends forward across the desk when Watson can’t formulate a rebuttal to any of it. “So let him go,” he says, merciless. “Let him move on. The way you did.” 

John makes a small sound, almost like disbelief, shaking his head. His mouth opens, but no words come out. 

Mycroft observes him, then sits back, satisfied that his point has landed. “Oh, and there’s one other thing,” he adds conversationally. “You should know that you may or may not be Rosie’s father.” 

John’s chin comes up at this. “What?” He stares at Mycroft, the words sinking in. “Is this – do you know, one way or the other?” 

“I do,” Mycroft informs him. “However, I am not going to tell you. I don’t want this to be an influencing factor in your decision. Should you choose to attempt a reconciliation with Mary, it needs to be because you chose her above Sherlock once and for all, for her own sake, and not because you simply fathered a child with her. And it needs to be done with the knowledge that you may _not_ have fathered a child with her. I am simply eliminating Rosie as a factor in this decision. Surely, if you’re capable of overlooking everything else that Mary has done, this should hardly be much more to ask. You’ve already overlooked her entire career of murder-for-profit, overthrowing governments, provoking war, the attempted murder of your ‘best friend’, and an endless stream of lies to you personally. It should hardly be the factor that makes or breaks your decision over whether or not you want to spend your life with her.” 

John thinks about this for a long moment, his forehead knit. He nods. “Okay,” he says abruptly. He looks at Mycroft again. “Does Mary know? About Rosie, I mean.” 

“Yes.” Mycroft does not tell him how he knows; to tell him would be to say too much. “If you go, you will leave the child behind. I can tell you that where you would be going is no safe place for a child of Rosie’s age. She will be looked after.” 

John’s jaw clenches visibly. “If I go, _I_ will see that she’s looked after,” he says tersely. “She’s my responsibility.” 

Mycroft concedes. “As you wish, then.” He gathers the photos and map and replaces them in their file, closes the desk drawer and fits his fingers together atop the desk again. “Take your time,” he says. “This will be a large decision for you. It’s important that you consider carefully. You know how to reach me.” 

John, a good soldier if lacking in many other respects, recognises a dismissal when he hears one. He nods and gets to his feet, then leaves without looking back. 

Mycroft watches the door close behind him grimly. And now to wait. 

*** 

John walks until it grows light. 

He doesn’t even know what part of London he’s in; he simply walked and walked and walked, hands shoved deep into the pockets of his jacket, his head and chest swimming. There’s so much that it took him hours just to begin sorting it into its relevant categories. 

Mary is alive. What the _hell_. Somehow, though, it felt right within seconds of learning the fact. She left him. On her own terms. She knew it was over: the marriage which she angled at and subtly pushed for, the proposal she’d teased him for dragging his feet over, the casual dropping of facts like her ring size and times of year that are nice for weddings. _My friend Alice was married last year up in Oxfordshire. Lovely spot for it, only I’d always prefer a spring wedding to a winter one. Who gets married in February? Honestly, John!_ He saw the manipulation after the fact. Maybe during it, too. Yeah. A bit. But he’d also known that he needed to move on, close the door on hoping against all hope or reason that Sherlock might still be out there somewhere. There was a grave – a grave that he’d spoken to, cried in front of, raged at, sometimes. Not later, once Mary started going with him. He didn’t talk those times, or even think all that much. That stuff was private. Having Mary there was like having someone turn the lights on in the middle of the night, all of the ghostly, half-formed thoughts and utterances scattering like wisps of mist in the morning sun. Which was, after all, part of the point of having brought her in the first place. With Mary there, standing between him and the endless void of his own grief, there didn’t seem to be much reason not to marry her, in the end. 

She knew it was over, though. Their marriage. There was an uncomfortable moment of truth between them, on the way back from Morocco. _I liked Mary_ , she’d said, meaning the name. _Yeah, me too,_ he’d said. _Or I used to._ He’d seen it register on her face. She was clever; she knew exactly what he meant. She _is_ clever, rather, John corrects himself. Because she’s still out there somewhere, God knows where, doing God knows what. She knew that he didn’t love her anymore and she just planned her own escape, preferably one that would leave him feeling abjectly guilty forever and destroy his friendship with Sherlock as a bonus. Oh, he doesn’t doubt that. For all the chumminess the two of them had going on the surface, he did actually see that it was at least partly feigned. For his sake? Maybe. Probably, he reflects. 

The fact that Mary shot Sherlock did make that somewhat unmistakeable, too, John reflects wryly, not seeing the streets he’s passing. The thud of his own footsteps on the pavement echoes dully in his ears. He turns another corner and keeps walking. If he stops for too long, it will all catch up and overwhelm him completely. It’s taken him so long to see any of it clearly, and maybe he still doesn’t. He’s always been a slow learner that way, figuring out what he thinks and how he feels. It’s not that he thinks he’s stupid, but when it comes to figuring himself out, it’s never been easy, that sort of stuff. He did know that he didn’t love her anymore. When did that even stop? John walks and thinks, frowning at the pavement as he watches it pass beneath his shoes. Was it the moment he heard her voice over the phone Sherlock had given him, promising answers that night in Leinster Gardens? Was it before that? He hadn’t suspected, about Mary. Not for a moment. He hadn’t put the pieces together. She was too clever for that. ( _Is_ too clever, John reminds himself.) Only he’d known there was something funny about Sherlock’s shot. He’d been to enough crime scenes with Sherlock by then to know that someone who was shot in the heart almost definitely saw their shooter, but Sherlock refused to talk about it at the hospital, once he’d regained consciousness at last. John had asked point blank, yet Sherlock had demurred, changing the subject or attempting to divert John’s attention, until he’d had no choice but to address it. _Please_ , he’d said, glancing up at John from beneath his lashes. _I’ll tell you when I can. When the moment is right. Until then, leave it alone. Please._ It was so unlike him to say please at all, let alone twice, that John had blinked, swallowed, and nodded. _But I don’t understand_ , he’d tried. _Why can’t you talk about it?_ But Sherlock had only shaken his head. _I will_ , he’d said again, then changed the subject. 

Nevertheless, he hadn’t suspected Mary’s involvement. To this day, he remembers the cold feeling that had slithered into his belly when he saw the bottle of her perfume in the Baker Street sitting room. A new bottle, unopened: not hers, yet a ghostly wisp of its scent nonetheless seemed to hang in the air. Suddenly his own question seemed idiotic: _Who would he be protecting?_ Who has Sherlock ever protected, besides him? But hearing Mary’s voice, then seeing her there, gun in hand, her features uncharacteristically cold… maybe that was the moment when it stopped. 

He knows very well that he’d have never gone back if it hadn’t been for Rosie. John rounds another corner unseeingly and lets himself think about this now. He almost suspected that Mary had invented the pregnancy just to force him to come back, only Sherlock had deduced it as of the wedding. Although, this new question of paternity could essentially work out to the same thing: if Mary had suspected for a second that Rosie wasn’t his, she certainly never would have let on or else it really would have put the final nail into the coffin of their marriage. She probably, he sees now, deliberately led Sherlock into the deduction to solidify the marriage. Nothing she did was without calculation, after all. Possibly even including Rosie. 

Rosie. John thinks about her for a long moment, hearing his footfalls on the pavement and little else. His child. Or so he’s always thought. He knows he never wanted to have kids. Knows it and did his damnedest to keep it to himself once Mary got pregnant. They hadn’t even talked about it, about having kids. He supposes he thought they’d both just figured they were too old for that. It was a surprise, to say the least. They’d always used protection. He knew Mary was taking birth control and he’d always used a condom. But then Sherlock had come out with the fact, and it was their wedding day and a piece of news like that is supposed to be a happy surprise, a welcome one, so he’d put on a smile to cover his shock, then let the weird moment between the three of them get mercifully cut short as Mary dragged him off to dance. He loves Rosie. Loves her fiercely – would do anything to protect her, John thinks, feeling his brow furrow. What if he were to go after Mary and she told him that Rosie wasn’t his? That she was the daughter of Mary and her ex, say. Or someone else entirely. Would that change how he felt? Would he stop feeling like Rosie’s father? Would those feelings just… disappear? He chews it over for several blocks, unable to come up with an answer. He wonders suddenly if Sherlock knows. Mycroft didn’t say. 

_Sherlock._

John glances around, more to gauge the light and the lateness of the hour than to figure out where the hell he is. It’s got to be past four now. Even here, even now, alone in some unknown bit of London, he can’t quite look it in the eye. But he’s got to, because he’s currently facing the single largest crossroads of his life to date. Mycroft knew, he thinks numbly. Knew it as an unchallengeable fact, not a theory he felt reasonably certain of, based on certain evidence. Just stated it outright as though there was no possibility for John to deny it, explain it away, put it into a different light. And John hadn’t tried. Mycroft needled him about it on and off for that first year and a half that he lived with Sherlock, always insinuating John’s unspoken feelings in snide undertones that John used to devoutly pray Sherlock wouldn’t notice – as if Sherlock is even capable of not noticing things. Although, John reflects, Mycroft was actually rather merciful about that one, particular thing at the meeting, harsh as the entire thing was. He didn’t force John to admit it. Just referred to John’s feelings as though the subject of undisputed fact. It _is_ a fact, though, the way he feels about Sherlock. It always has been. It’s always been there, sitting just below the surface, and he’s staunchly ignored it or done his best to. There have been times when it’s come too close to breaking through, but he’s always managed to at least pretend not to see it, himself, in hopes that his feigned ignorance would somehow make it invisible to everyone else, too. 

Sherlock, though… Mycroft stated Sherlock’s feelings just as clearly, and that part makes John wince almost more than having his own secret so casually laid bare. He’s seen that, too, if he’s honest with himself. Tried just as hard to ignore _it_ when it surfaced, too. Like that very same moment at the wedding, when Sherlock deduced the pregnancy. That awkward silence as the horrible fact of John’s new marriage made itself all too painfully clear, Sherlock’s smile fading and sliding off his face, the look in his eyes momentarily all too plain. Had his own expression been just as transparent? John grimaces at the very thought. Probably. He’s always been rubbish at hiding what he feels. He can think of dozens of moments now, when he could see Sherlock’s feelings a bit too plainly. There are so many that John could practically select any memory from Baker Street days at random and find something. A look in Sherlock’s eyes, a touch that lingered longer than it might have between any other two friends. There was that moment on the tarmac, too. _Was_ Sherlock going to say it, then? John had felt sure of it in his gut, instinctively rejecting it. _Not here. Not now, for God’s sake, when it’s already years too late. Don’t make me face it now. Don’t leave things like that._ Sherlock had somehow either read John’s unwillingness to hear it on his face and decided to spare him, or else thought better of it at the last second, himself. He hadn’t said it. Yet they both knew. 

It's been there in John’s overt jealousy, too, the jealousy he’d had no right to feel right after he’d just gone and married someone else, himself. Irene Adler. He hadn’t been able to hide it at all, finally huffing off to leave them alone, in case Sherlock wanted that. He’s tried to do the right thing, even if he wasn’t capable of feeling the right way. Sherlock has to have known, too, then. How he felt. So why did it never happen in the first place? 

John thinks back to their first meeting, then their first dinner the next day. Thinks of his own verbal probe, trying to get a read on Sherlock, figure out his status. His orientation. Anything. Sherlock didn’t give him much, beyond the _Women: not really my area_ and the line about being married to his work. And John, in turn, had backed away immediately, denying that he was asking Sherlock out, when – had he been, in the end? To this day he still doesn’t know. But that seemed to establish pretty clearly that Sherlock wasn’t interested, and John just… never tried again. By the time Sherlock jumped from the roof of St Bart’s, it almost could have come about. John had stopped even trying to date anyone else by then. There hadn’t seemed to be much point and it he’d become resigned to the fact that it seemed that his priorities simply put Sherlock ahead of anyone else, which made trying to sustain any other major relationship rather impossible. But then Sherlock had jumped, John’s life fell apart rather spectacularly, and that was that. 

By the time Sherlock came back, it really was too late, or so he thought at the time. Mary was there, firmly ensconcing herself between them and among them, which changed everything irrevocably. Their dynamic was fractured, even when she wasn’t actively there. And he’d been furious with Sherlock – relieved to have him back, but furious with him for having done that, left him behind, left him to grieve, and that fury just hadn’t gone away. It was there, lurking beneath everything, and at the source of it was John’s endless, endless hurt that Sherlock had left him that way, hadn’t even thought him important enough to be one of the people he’d told he was still alive. That fury and hurt drove so many of their interactions from the night of Sherlock’s ridiculous revelation at the Landmark, right up to and including the way John treated him following Mary’s death. There was a six-month reprieve during Sherlock’s recovery as John moved back into Baker Street to look after him following Mary’s shot. By then, his fury had expanded to include Mary in its target, and that fury never died, either. He hadn’t talked about it much, and neither had Sherlock, respecting his obvious preference not to, and a quiet companionship was allowed to cautiously bloom between them again. John kept his constant internal debate about whether or not to go back to Mary to himself for the most part, and Sherlock had always been carefully neutral when it did come up. 

What a disaster, John thinks, turning another corner. He realises after a moment that he recognises the street; he’s not all that far from the flat. He still doesn’t think of it as ‘home’ by any means; that’s always been Baker Street. He begins to make his way toward the flat, sparing a moment to feel devoutly glad that Kate Whitney agreed to take Rosie for a few days while he gets himself sorted. What the hell is he supposed to do now? Ignore the fact that Mary faked her death? Ignore the fact that his daughter’s paternity is now apparently completely up in the air? Ignore it and… what? Get the hell on with living his life, as he attempted to tell himself that night when he said all the wrong things to Sherlock? (That night: ugh. He’d failed utterly to say any of the stuff he should have said. Bloody typical.) Is now the moment to finally take his courage in his hands and ask Sherlock for a re-do on just about everything? John ponders this for several blocks. It’s just that he’s fucked up so much of it, so spectacularly, he reflects dismally. He’s hurt Sherlock badly, both physically and emotionally. Being forced to watch what he did that day in the hospital morgue was unbearable. He’d almost thought he was going to vomit on Mycroft’s bare concrete office floor. He knows very well that the majority of his behaviour toward Sherlock since Sherlock’s return has been unforgiveable, and he hasn’t had the guts to even ask for that forgiveness. He hasn’t said, _Look, I know I’m a total shit friend. The truth is, the list of shit I’ve pulled is so long and so unforgiveable that I’ve frankly been avoiding having this conversation at all costs, because I can’t imagine why you would bother forgiving any of it, honestly. I probably wouldn’t if it were me._ He winces, thinking of it. It’s the truth, though: he can’t imagine why Sherlock would forgive him, and dubiously marvels at the fact that Sherlock does still seem to want them to be friends. 

He deserves better. John kicks at a bit of broken concrete and scowls. To ask Sherlock now to not only go on giving him more chances that he doesn’t deserve, but to give even more of himself, makes him cringe to even think of. He doesn’t know whether Sherlock would actually want that, whatever he feels, but Mycroft seems quite certain that Sherlock would want something like that. Maybe he shouldn’t want it, at least not from him. John knows very well that if his own feelings for Sherlock are what they are, then he should want Sherlock to be happy. It seems pretty damned obvious now that that’s all Sherlock has wanted for him, and that he’s done everything in his power to allow John to have what he wanted, or thought he wanted. That he’s prioritised John’s safety, life, and overall happiness at the expense of absolutely everything, including any of that for himself. John shivers. Sherlock definitely deserves better than him. _Let him move on,_ he hears Mycroft, his face sober in the austerity of his underground lair, and then the cutting addition: _The way you did_. Only I never did, John thinks, trudging along. He never stopped futilely feeling what he’s felt all along and never fully let himself acknowledge. Moving on was never a possibility. There was only doing his best to ignore it and trying to settle for whatever _was_ possible. 

What if he did nothing, then? What if he just stayed here and kept on going with the way things are now? Somehow he doesn’t think that Mycroft’s dictum would allow for this. John walks several more blocks, thinking this over. Maybe he couldn’t allow it, either. No: it definitely feels like he’s reached a crossroads. A decision has got to be made. What would it mean if he were to go, then? Chase Mary down and demand some answers? He wouldn’t have any intention of trying to resolve things with her, but it could be cathartic to have it out with her, hold her to some sort of accountability. But then what? Mycroft made it quite clear that if he goes, he can’t come back. He doesn’t control the UK’s borders, but John feels quite certain that if Mycroft Holmes wanted to deny someone entry, he would absolutely have the power to do so. So: if he goes, it’s to be permanent exile. What would that even look like? 

Suddenly, he stops, realising that he’s arrived in front of his own door. Mary’s door. Whatever. The secondary realisation of his immense fatigue washes over him like an afterthought. The sun is rising above the street now. John staggers up the front steps and unlocks the door, letting himself inside. He’s too tired to bother with the fuss of going to bed properly. He steps out of his shoes, pulls off his jacket and drops it to the floor. It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t care. His entire life is up in the air, so who could possibly care about a jacket? He stumbles over to the sofa and lies down on it, pulls the blanket that’s draped over top down onto himself, and falls into an exhausted sleep within seconds. 

*** 

When he wakes many hours later, the sun is slanting in through the windows, on its way down again. He walked all night and now he’s slept through most of the day. As he lies there, blinking and trying to orient himself in time and space, it occurs to him that two thoughts have emerged clearly as he’s slept. First, he’s got to know the truth about Rosie. He’s sorely lacking when it comes to being any sort of father to her, but this, at least, he’s got to know. He doesn’t know what he’ll do with the information once he does, but surely he owes it to her to know the truth. The specific benefit to Rosie is somewhat less obvious to his sleep-hazed mind at the moment, but the feeling itself is solid enough. He needs to know the truth. 

The second fact is staring him in the face as though it’s always been there, and he supposes it always has, only he’s never found it so starkly impossible to evade any longer: he loves Sherlock. He does. He always has. He’s never come out and said it, not even in the privacy of his own thoughts, but now that he’s awake, the fact is inescapable. However, he knows that nothing is right between them and that there can’t be any question of what he really wants ever happening. There’s just too much bad history between them, and most of it his fault. He would have no right to ask Sherlock for anything remotely like that. Mycroft is right: he needs to let Sherlock move on. 

John sits up and rubs his eyes, then yawns. So is that decided, then? Is he going to go? He thinks about it for a long minute, ignoring the rumbling in his empty stomach. Yes, he thinks after a bit. Somehow the decision was already made when he woke up. He’s got to. He’s also got to tell Sherlock. Not all of it, but something, at least. To explain himself. To say goodbye this time. Sherlock has the right to know. He looks around for a piece of paper and a functioning pen, thinks for a long time, then begins to write. 

When it’s finished, another hour has past and the sitting room has plunged back into shadow. John folds the letter, puts it into an envelope and seals it shut, then writes Sherlock’s name on the back side. He picks up his phone, notes that it’s at four percent, and uses its remaining battery life to call for some food. He plugs it in at his desk, then stands there for a moment, thinking, then types out a text to Mycroft. 

_Send me the information. I’d like to leave in two days’ time._

*** 

The silence of the sitting room is oppressive.

Sherlock is motionless on the sofa, his right forearm lying across his face, John’s letter held loosely between the numb fingers of his left hand on his stomach. It’s more or less memorised at this point. Like John’s other letter. When Mycroft’s minion came, ringing the bell properly even though Sherlock is certain they’ve all got keys, he’d gone downstairs to answer the door when Mrs Hudson didn’t, then looked down at the envelope he was being offered.

“What’s this?” he’d asked, but then his eyes had fallen on his own name, printed in John’s sturdy hand, and a cold fog had settled in his intestines. 

“Letter for you, sir. Delivered on your brother’s orders,” the minion informed him, then departed without further exchange. 

Sherlock had closed the door, locked it with care, barely aware that his fingers were trembling, then carried the letter upstairs. He’d managed to put off reading it by making tea first, then deciding at random to put a dressing gown on (for protection? What rubbish), then finally sitting down in his chair to unseal the envelope with fingers that wouldn’t keep steady, and unfolded the single, handwritten page. That was something, at least. John typed the last one, which made it feel even colder. 

_Dear Sherlock,_

_I’ve been sitting here for five minutes just staring at the page. I’m not sure where to begin, to be honest. I guess I should just start. It turns out that Mary is alive after all. Faked her death. I’ve no idea why she did that, but I’m going after her. I’ve got to get some answers. I’m leaving Rosie with Kate Whitney, and I’ve asked her to keep you, Molly, and Mrs Hudson in the loop, as her godparents. I shouldn’t have cut you out that other time, and I’m sorry. There’s a lot of things I’m sorry about, but that’s one of them. If you want to take Rosie for an afternoon or however long, please do. I’ve made sure that Kate’s got your number and I know you’ve got hers already, and she knows that you’re to have access to Rosie if you want it._

_I’m putting this off because it’s so hard to say, but it looks like I won’t be coming back. I wish I could say more but there isn’t really time and I don’t even know if I can even bring myself to tell you all the reasons why. But one of the big ones is that I’ve treated you abominably over the years, especially since you came back. I’ve never said, but I always should have. The truth is that I’m horribly ashamed of myself. I know I’ve hurt you and I’m sorry. There’s so much more that I could say, stuff that I think you could probably work out, but at this point I’m not even sure what the point would be. I wish things had been different. You’ve given me chance after chance and I’ve blown it every time. You deserve better. You always have. I’m also sorry for not saying goodbye, that time in the hospital. (God, I hate everything about that day. I’m so sorry.) I should have had the guts to say goodbye to your face. Maybe I should now, too, but the truth is that I can’t face the thought of doing it, of saying goodbye. Again, you deserve better than me and I hope you’ll have it someday. I wish you all the very best. I’m sorry._

_-John_

He’d sat very still for a long time afterward, his eyes sketching up and down the single sheet of paper again, his mind not wanting to accept the meaning the words were attempting to thrust upon it. John was gone. Had already left. Because Mary is alive after all. 

Of course. He should have known it was too pat, somehow. Too staged, though he’d believed it at the time – believed it and immediately accepted the blame for it, as she’d clearly intended him to do. Slowly, questions began to form. Has Mary reached out to John, then? Somehow contacted him from wherever she is? Why did she falsify her death, if the major part of the ruse was presumably for John to have thought her dead? Has she changed her mind? Sherlock is all too stingingly aware of what the pain of losing John feels like; he’s already experienced it more than he’s ever cared to. The two years he’d spent on the run, methodically tracking down every person who might still pose a threat to John’s life until the mission was finally accomplished and he was permitted to return from involuntary exile – those years were unbearably awful. Then there was John’s terse, profane rejection of him at The Landmark that left him wondering what the entire point of coming home had even been. John forgave him, at least at face value, but then came the softer, more enduring loss of John to Mary, somehow almost worse for being merely a partial loss: John was still there, but nothing was the same. Their old camaraderie was forever altered. Then Mary shot him and his very near-death could have well constituted a permanent loss – of John and everything else with it. But that, at least, brought about John’s physical return to Baker Street, but Sherlock always knew it was temporary at best. John would go back, out of a sense of duty to his child at the very least. But more likely because, beneath the white flame of his rage toward Mary, he very likely still loved her, and despite his temper, John loves hard when he loves, and that side of him always wins out in the end. Eventually. 

His rejection following what Sherlock had sincerely believed to be Mary’s death brought on the worst period of his life to date. The very memory of it makes him wince. But they’d got through that, too. Somehow. Impossibly. He’d hoped that the trials and near-death experience of their encounter with his sister would at least bring them closer together, and it did. Much of the resentment had finally faded from John’s eyes, although that was simply replaced by a look of constant fatigue, endlessly beleaguered by too much work, commitments that he was duly keeping but with nothing left over for himself. Which meant, Sherlock reflects now, nothing much left for him, either. For them. For whatever they were by the end of all of that. 

In one sense, the letter is almost comforting, at least if he ignores most of its other effects. John has never been adept at verbalising his feelings, least of all those which are the deepest and most fundamental to him. This letter is possibly the closest that John is capable of coming to acknowledging the existence of the possibilities between them which have never transpired into realities. _There’s so much more that I could say, stuff that I think you could probably work out_ , John wrote, still not acknowledging it directly, yet nonetheless implying it. It helps to know that some of the things which Sherlock has done his utmost to firmly prevent himself from hoping for, from even thinking of, much less lose himself to senseless fantasy over, were real possibilities after all. Not that any of that matters now, because John is gone, taking with him any sense of purpose or reason to Sherlock’s existence. 

It feels piercingly unfair. Sherlock hears himself take a deep breath and release it again, staring up at the ceiling. There isn’t a single thing more that he could have done for John. Not that he was ever trying to prove himself, prove his worth, but – what’s that trite saying that Mrs Hudson has spouted before? _‘Love wants for the beloved’_ , that’s it. Probably true, though. He’s tried so hard to give John what he wanted, allow him to have the life he wanted, even if it hadn’t included much of him in the end. To give him back a sense of purpose and the facility to live that out however he pleased. To free him from the consequences of Mary’s past, should it return to haunt them both. To free him from Mary’s potential retaliation, the night John learned who she really was, and what she’d done. The bullet she’d put into Sherlock’s heart. He’d never forgotten that John once got himself arrested simply because the police chief of the moment (bumbling fool that he was) had said something mildly insulting about him, how defensive John had become over such a small thing. His fury at Mary that night in the sitting room was precisely what Sherlock had predicted it would be, and he’d gone in prepared to spare John from any potential retaliation from Mary. He remembers her standing there, by the hearth: hands interlinked backward, shoulders tense, eyes wary, trained on John – a caged animal, and a dangerous one. It’s one thing for John to go up against half of London’s thugs, but Mary was – is, rather – a criminal of another class. A professional assassin, and one who had just risked everything including the life of the best man at her wedding to prevent the exact scenario that was playing out between the three of them. He could not permit her to lash out should John have left her that night, as he was clearly about to do. He was seconds away from his heart giving out and in no position to protect John in any other way. So he’d lied to John about Mary’s intentions, convinced him to stay with her, and Mary hadn’t contradicted his invented motives for her, smoothly going along with it to her own advantage. 

Their surface camaraderie worked, more or less. On the surface, he could like her. There were times when the fondness was real. But her bullet had made it clear on a level which neither of them ever acknowledged openly that it was indeed mere façade, and when John went back to her, Sherlock had felt a stinging resentment over it. He wasn’t surprised by it. Not exactly. To this day he doesn’t know whether or not he expected John to go back to her after the shot. But he knew better than to let John see the resentment, and squashed it down. If he was going to have any part of John, any place in his life, it was only ever going to be a partial one. It was better than nothing. But the parts that were missing, some of which had always been missing, clamoured worse after his return from exile than they ever had before, and after John shut him out following Mary’s death, the agony of it had nearly done him in. He’s always known that there is nothing he wouldn’t do to make John’s life easier, give him whatever he wants or needs. He would give up the work. Baker Street. Any of that. He has quite literally laid down both his life and freedom in order to do that, to make John happy. The thought of being alive, yet living a life that does not include John, feels immeasurably worse than death. 

There was no return address on the envelope. No way to contact John. After deliberating endlessly for two hours, he gritted his teeth and tried texting, just a simple _I got your letter. Can we at least talk about this?_ , but the message failed to send and the failure managed to simultaneously fail to surprise, yet nevertheless crush him. So: John’s had his phone service shut off, or else he’s out of network range. John meant it, then: he has left and he won’t be coming back. The letter certainly sounds final enough, and the thought of having now lost John forever, of never seeing him again, is devastating. 

What about Rosie, though? Sherlock sits up in sudden thought. If John intends to go to Mary and stay wherever she is, surely he would come back for his daughter? Sherlock gets up and begins to pace in agitation. If the entire notion is to reunite their small family, for John to search Mary out, attempt some sort of confrontation with the hopes of it leading to a resolution, a rekindling of their marriage – which was presumably what Mary had in mind if she reached out to him and therefore seems rather a likelier result than otherwise – then surely they would want to have Rosie with them, wouldn’t they? Leaving her with Kate has to be a temporary measure. Which means that, at some point, John _will_ be in contact with Kate. There is a chance, however small, of catching John when he comes for Rosie – a chance to say that none of the stuff John is so sorry about, sorry enough that he thinks it’s too late to even because it’s simply too late to make reparations now – that none of that matters in any way to Sherlock. To fall to his knees and beg him, if necessary, to come back to London and to him. He’ll say it all, if John is willing to hear it. If John has come to the point of at least acknowledging that there _were_ possibilities between them, if all he needs is for Sherlock to be the first to state it aloud, then he’ll say it, beg John to consider him above Mary. He knows there isn’t any more to give than he’s already given – he knows that whatever he has given or done will never be enough to offset the many ways in which he’s hurt John over the years. But if there’s a chance, any chance at all, then he needs to take it. 

Sherlock flies into action, sprinting down the corridor to the bedroom, stripping off the dressing gown and his pyjamas and getting properly dressed. A suit, yes: he’ll need to look presentable if he’s to convince Kate Whitney, whom he’s never met, to share what she knows with him, promise to tell him once John comes back to London. He’s just about to dash down the corridor for his coat and then a taxi when Sherlock catches a glimpse out the bedroom window and realises that it’s dark outside. What time is it? He takes his phone out of the jacket pocket of his suit. It’s past eleven. The letter was delivered sometime close to noon and the rest of the day has slipped away. It is too late to go to Kate Whitney’s house and demand that she tell him whatever she knows.

Sherlock feels the energy seep from his frame as rapidly as it came and despair re-establishes a vicious hold. John has left. Left permanently, and does not want to be found. Not this time. Any possibilities that ever may have once existed between them have been laid forever to rest: John has made his choice, and he has chosen Mary. He chose to leave. Made himself unfollowable, unfindable. (God.) It’s hopeless.

Sherlock takes the suit off again and crawls heavily into bed. He sets an alarm for the morning, thinking that he can still pay Kate Whitney a visit then. If it’s his one possibility of ever seeing John again, then he feels compelled to take it. He is incapable of not taking it. Yet John’s choice bears down on him like an anvil as he lies there in the dark, his entire frame aching beneath its crushing weight. 

*** 

Kate blinks in slight confusion as she opens the front door, but Sherlock’s relief at finding her at home is so great that it barely registers. “Yes?” she asks. “Can I help you?” 

“Kate Whitney,” Sherlock says, trying to curb the abruptness in his tone. It doesn’t work; urgency is fuelling his impatience too strongly for him to temper it. “I’m Sherlock Holmes.” 

He doesn’t offer to shake hands. Kate’s face relaxes. “Oh!” she says. “Yes! I know who you are. You’re John’s friend. The detective, isn’t that right?” 

A muscle in Sherlock’s jaw clenches momentarily and he fights to swallow down the impatience sufficient to come across as pleasant. “Yes, that’s right,” he says, managing to keep his tone neutral. “May I come in?” 

Kate hesitates, but then nods and stands back from the door. “Were you wanting to see Rosie?” she asks. “John said you might be in contact…” She trails off, uncertain, possibly uncomfortable with having him in her house, stranger that he is. 

Sherlock blinks. He hadn’t considered asking for this, but he nods. “Yes, all right,” he says. He pauses, feeling awkward. “How is she?” 

“Oh, she’s all right,” Kate says reassuringly. “She’s in the sitting room here, in her playpen. John brought it when he went.” She bends and lifts Rosie out of the enclosure and away from the plastic blocks she was absorbed in, producing a minor protest on her part. “You’re her godfather, isn’t that right? I remember from the christening.” 

Sherlock accepts the child, not having been given a choice, but her weight is a familiar comfort, even in light of present circumstances. “Hello, Watson,” he says, fondness welling in spite of the urgency of his errand. Rosie makes a conversational sound and grabs at the collar of his coat. He shifts her onto his left side, the better to establish eye contact with Kate, who is eyeing him and waiting, presumably for him to clarify his presence. He clears his throat. “Er – it’s about John, actually… I was wondering whether you – whether he might have specified when he’ll be coming back for Rosie. Or how long he’ll be… away.” 

Kate frowns. “No, he didn’t say,” she says. “He’d asked me to take her for a couple of days, then he came by and said that something came up and that might need to be for awhile longer than he’d thought. It was all rather vague. I got the feeling he couldn’t talk about it or something. He seemed in a hurry. He didn’t tell you?” 

Sherlock feels his lips compress. He looks down at his goddaughter to avoid eye contact and shakes his head. Rosie is preoccupied with trying to capture the red threading around his top buttonhole. “No.” 

Kate seems to perceive the awkwardness just as clearly. “Oh. Er… I don’t know what to say, then… I would have thought you would know more than me. I’m just his neighbour. And Rosie’s babysitter, pretty often.”

Sherlock forces himself to produce the difficult question. “I wondered if I could ask you to let me know when you hear from John,” he says, the words grating in his throat. “I… can’t go into the details, but I don’t – we’re not in contact. I just – I would like to see him when he comes back for Rosie, and I don’t have any other way to find out when that will be. Would you… be willing to do that?” 

Kate looks more troubled than ever, but she nods. “I suppose so,” she says. “Though I haven’t got any idea when that might be. I haven’t even got a phone number for him – he said he wouldn’t be reachable while he was away.” She pauses, clearly wanting a good deal more information than he’s offered. “Do you think he’s in some sort of trouble?” she asks instead. 

Sherlock debates how to respond to this, then says, “I’m not sure, honestly. How did… how did he seem to you when he was here?” 

“Agitated,” Kate tells him, looking worried. “And he said to contact your brother, actually, if I didn’t hear from him after two weeks. To sort out what to do about Rosie and that. It made me wonder.” 

Sherlock looks up sharply at this. “What?” It’s too harsh, but that can’t be helped. “My brother is involved in this?” 

Kate looks taken aback by his response but she nods. “Yes… he was here, later on the same day that John came by to ask if I could keep Rosie for longer. Day before yesterday. He was a bit odd – sorry, I just mean, really formal and that – but very kind. He left me his card, said I should contact him if I needed anything for Rosie, or if I found I couldn’t look after her anymore or something.” 

Fury is roaring to life like a furnace within Sherlock’s chest and for a moment he can’t breathe. So Mycroft was behind this! Somehow, this all comes back to him. He forces the fury down, lest it come snarling out his mouth. “I see,” he says tightly. He hands Rosie back, resolutely ignoring the tug of affection for the child as he does so. “If you could let me know as soon as you hear anything – anything at all, from John, or my brother – I would be grateful.” His tone is stiff, but he finds himself incapable of continuing the conversation. 

Kate takes Rosie from him and nods, her kindly face as worried as ever. Sherlock turns to go, but she speaks again. “Mr Holmes?” 

He turns back, his shoulders and face both set. “Yes?” It’s short, almost terse. He needs to leave, but he also cannot afford to alienate this woman who is his only key to seeing John ever again. 

Kate bites her lower lip a little, like a character in a third-rate novel. “Look, it’s not my place to say… I don’t know what’s going on between you and John, but… well, I can see this is very important to you. You don’t have to say, but… I get the feeling you might be in love with him. And if that’s part of this, part of why you’re not able to talk to him directly… ” She winces a little. “I’m probably barking up the wrong tree altogether.” 

Sherlock takes a deep breath and looks down at the worn carpeting of the hallway. He shakes his head. “You’re not.” He only just manages to look at her then, his eyes sketching over her too-kind face. Should he say something else, elaborate on his clipped words? He decides against it. “You have my number,” he says. “Contact me anytime. That goes for Rosie, too, as well as about – ” He finds he cannot say John’s name. “Thank you.” He turns and manages to get himself out the door without further entanglement or admission. 

Once he’s made it to the nearest road busy enough for cabs, he raises his arm for one. The fury is still blazing in his gut, staining his face like blood splatter at a crime scene. A taxi swerves over to the kerb and he gets in, giving the address of Mycroft’s subterranean lair. “And hurry,” he adds grimly. Mycroft owes him a great number of answers and is about to give them, whether he wants to or not. 

*** 

Mycroft looks startled when Sherlock summarily barges into his office, and Sherlock is vindictively glad to see it. None of Mycroft’s shadowy employees had time to warn him, then. No one apprehended him on his way down, but he supposes Mycroft could have waved him through. 

Mycroft opens his mouth to speak, already frowning, but Sherlock doesn’t give him the chance. The door bangs shut behind him. “What have you done?” he demands. 

Mycroft blinks, then begins cautiously. “That might be easier to answer if I had any indication what you’re talking, about, br – ”

“About John,” Sherlock cuts him off, his gaze boring into Mycroft’s expansive forehead. His fury drives the words forward. “ _What did you do, Mycroft?_ ” 

Mycroft doesn’t move a muscle. “What do you mean?” 

“You know what I mean!” Sherlock explodes. “You sent him somewhere! Where did you send him? And _why_ , Mycroft? Why did you send him away?” 

There’s the slightest flinch, but Sherlock catches it. A muscle works over the right side of Mycroft’s jaw. “What makes you think I had anything to – ”

“Because you already know about it! Because you went to Kate Whitney’s house!” Sherlock shouts. “Don’t treat me like an idiot! I _know_ you’re behind this; I just haven’t got the slightest idea why you would do this to me! Just tell me!” 

Mycroft inhales carefully, then swallows and looks down at his desk. “It was for your own good,” he says, a little less sanctimoniously than he might have, yet his tone carries the weight of genuine conviction. “Perhaps we should discuss this when you’ve had time to get hold of yourself,” he adds, not quite meeting Sherlock’s nailing gaze. 

Sherlock glares all the harder, his entire frame flushed with the heat of his anger. He can’t think of a time when he’s ever been this angry before. “Spit. It. Out. _Now_.”

Mycroft sighs, then puts his hands on the desk and fits his long fingers together. “I assume you read his letter.” 

“Yes.” Sherlock doesn’t budge. “Did you?” He fires the question back point blank. 

“No,” Mycroft says firmly. “What did he say?” 

“That Mary is alive.” Sherlock stares Mycroft down. “Did you know?” 

“Yes,” Mycroft says simply, not attempting to prevaricate. “I’m the one who told him.” 

Then Mary didn’t reach out to John. She doesn’t know he’s coming. “Did she contact _you?_ ” Sherlock asks, narrowing his eyes. 

Mycroft shakes his head. “No. But there was no way to know that she wouldn’t, at some point. This was… an attempt at controlling the fall-out.” 

Sherlock sifts mentally through these words in two nanoseconds. “You assumed that she would change her mind at some point and make contact with him.” 

Mycroft gives him a smile that twists into a sneer. “You share her feelings for him: wouldn’t you have, at some point?” 

“I wouldn’t have falsified my death and left him in the first place, not by choice,” Sherlock snarls, realising the weakness of the statement only halfway through it. “So she doesn’t know he’s coming. You’ve sent him to corner her, and she won’t be expecting him. Is that it, Mycroft?” 

Mycroft’s mouth moves but he only looks down at his hands and doesn’t acknowledge the question. 

Sherlock walks over and bends over the desk, his fingers gripping it so tightly that he’s almost able to still the fury that’s shaking them. “You’ve sent him into a trap, then. She _hasn’t_ made contact, isn’t looking for a reconciliation – instead, you’ve sent him to confront her. Is this a terminal mission, then? Are you actively trying to get him killed?” 

His brother turns his gaze back up to Sherlock’s and his expression is ugly. “He’s chosen her,” he states. “Would it be unjustified?” 

The fury rises into Sherlock’s throat in a chokehold. “Mycroft – ”

“You can’t be objective about this, little brother,” Mycroft says. “You’re utterly blind when it comes to him. But I’m not, and I couldn’t take it any longer. I couldn’t stand by and watch you throw yourself away on a man who has never seen your value, and was never going to even _contemplate_ a level of self-honesty that would allow him to even consider returning your feelings. I couldn’t stand watching you do that to yourself. So I gave him a choice.” 

Sherlock can barely speak around the ball of rage that’s lodged itself between his Adam’s apple and his larynx. “What. Choice?” The question comes out through gritted teeth. 

Mycroft ignores his rage, raising his chin and eyebrows both, his expression cool. “I confronted him with the fact that he had, after your little stunt on the flight that ultimately never you took to back to Serbia, agreed to look after you. I then made him watch the footage of him beating you in the morgue of Culverton Smith’s hospital. I then informed him that his wife is still living, and suggested it was time he made a choice. I offered to fund him and provide him with any information he might need should he choose to pursue Mary, on the condition that if he did so, he stay with her there and not come back.” 

Sherlock finds he can barely breathe. “And the other option?” 

Mycroft shrugs. “His other option was to stay here, and try significantly harder to do better by you. That option was not significantly discussed.” 

“Or what?” Sherlock asks, burning holes into his brother’s face. “What was the ultimatum, Mycroft?” 

“None was given.”

“But implied, surely,” Sherlock presses, feeling ill. “What would you have done? Arranged for an ‘accident’? A lucrative job offer in a city far from here? Threatened his sister or child? What, Mycroft?” 

“I implied nothing of the sort,” Mycroft says shortly. “I was simply forestalling the inevitable: that he would leave you for her again, after allowing you to wallow in childish hope for years. It’s better this way.” 

Sherlock’s rage finally works itself into words. “It wasn’t,” he begins, the words seething out through clenched teeth, “your choice to make. None of this was! You have cost me the only thing – the _only_ thing, Mycroft, that has ever meant anything of significance to me! If I chose to put significance into it, that was _my_ choice, not yours! It was _my_ choice to ‘throw myself away on him’, as you so witheringly put it! You couldn’t _hope_ to understand something like this – you never would have, not in a thousand years!” He stops to draw breath, but hasn’t nearly finished. “Listen,” he says, lowering his voice but losing none of his intensity or fury. “Years ago when I was using, you intervened and that was what you felt you had to do, I suppose. And ever since, you’ve felt you had the right to jerk me about by the strings like a puppet, sending me your ‘legwork’, your missions too sensitive to trust even your own staff with, giving me your dirty work. You’ve never once considered the fact that my life is, in fact, my own and if I choose to spend my time on people who fail to meet your standard, that is _my_ choice to do so. You tried to ‘test’ John within hours of my having met him – and whether he’d passed or failed, it was never up to you to test him in the first place! All my life, Mycroft, all my life, you’ve been doing this! I’ve let it go because I mostly believed that it was being done at least partly for my benefit, or else the benefit of the nation. But no more. Do you hear me? _No more!_ You don’t get to control my life or the people in it _anymore_! I am finished with you. You – this – is unforgiveable. You have taken the one thing of value from my life. The one thing I cared about above and beyond any other – as was my prerogative to do. This is the _end_.” 

He stops, heat suffusing his face, his entire frame rigid with anger. Mycroft has been listening impassively. “You’ve worked yourself into a complete state, brother m – ” he begins, but Sherlock cuts him off. 

“ _No_.” The word is a snarl. “You are not my brother anymore.” He sees the words register somewhere behind that façade, but he can also see Mycroft writing it off as passing anger. It doesn’t matter. What matters – the only thing that matters now – is John. Sherlock wills his emotions into icy check. “You are going to tell me where you sent John.” 

Mycroft favours him with a simpering smile. “Oh, am I?” 

Sherlock doesn’t hesitate. He withdraws the Browning from his coat pocket and aims it with both hands at Mycroft’s face. This, at least, registers. Sherlock doesn’t care. “Yes. You are. _Now._ ” 

Mycroft’s eyes are on the gun, his irritating implacability visibly shaken. He blinks several times. “I must say… I never thought to see you threaten me at gunpoint, Sherlock.” 

Sherlock doesn’t back down an inch. Let Mycroft have an inch and he’ll take a nation’s breadth. “Tell me where you sent John,” Sherlock repeats. 

Mycroft swallows. “The village,” he says, very quietly, and Sherlock instantly understands his hesitation. 

“In Serbia,” he says, confirming, but he already knows, his mouth gone dry at the very thought. Mycroft nods. For a moment, various emotions hold Sherlock in a grip so strong that he cannot speak. Then fury resurfaces and reinstates itself. “You sent him _there?_ ” Sherlock breathes. “Mycroft – ”

Mycroft’s stare is just as hard now. “It’s where Mary is,” he states. 

“How can she be there? Does anyone even still live there?” The questions ask themselves even as Sherlock struggles to gain control over the melee of memory and their associated emotions swirling within. 

Mycroft shrugs. “A few, I suppose. Squatters. The last of the rebels. You’ll recall, of course, that Mary does possess… intimate knowledge of the village. Shall we say.” 

‘Intimate knowledge’ is one way of putting it. Sherlock swallows in turn. “When did John leave? When is he scheduled to reach Mary?” 

Mycroft’s mouth twitches. “Today,” he says. “If he follows the instructions he was given.” 

“Details, Mycroft,” Sherlock orders, the revolver not wavering. “And _hurry_ , damn it!”

Mycroft looks at the barrel for a long moment, then looks away. “He left two days ago. He asked me to have his letter delivered to you only once he’d landed in Sarajevo. I divided his journey into pieces to avoid detection.” 

“By Mary,” Sherlock states, the words grating in his throat, and Mycroft doesn’t deny them. 

He ignores Sherlock and goes on. “From there, trains. First to Višegrad. From there to Batkovica. From there… he was given directions as to how to best cross the border on foot, and proceed from there to the village. You can understand the preference to avoid the questions that this particular destination might raise had he crossed at an official border crossing.” 

He turns his gaze back to Sherlock, his eyebrows raised to make his point, but Sherlock is trying to remember where Batkovica is. Near the border of Bosnia and Serbia, isn’t it? “Mycroft… that must be at least a four-hour walk,” he says, the words coming out with less conviction than he wishes he had, but he didn’t memorise every village in the surrounding area. 

“Yes,” Mycroft agrees. He makes a point of checking the clock on the wall. “He should be starting out in about an hour. I thought it best that he cross the border after dark. If he keeps to his instructions, he should reach Mary – if she’s where she should be – in about six hours.” 

Sherlock’s jaw clenches again. “Give me the address.” 

Mycroft looks at the Browning again. A vein in his forehead pulses. He takes a phone from his desk drawer and types something. “You should have it in your phone. Geographical coordinates as well as the former postal address, which… may be necessary. I don’t believe the village appears on official maps anymore. You know what occurred there, after all.”

“Quite,” Sherlock says tightly. “But what do you mean, ‘if he keeps to his instructions’? Are you not watching him? Did you send him without back-up, Mycroft? Is he armed, at least?” 

Mycroft’s jaw takes on a stubborn angle. “I could hardly have sent him through commercial airspace with a weapon on his person,” he says, and leaves the question of back-up unanswered, which is answer enough. 

“In other words, if something goes amiss – with Mary, or anything else – he’ll be on his own and defenseless, _there_ ,” Sherlock grits out, and Mycroft doesn’t contradict him. He lowers the gun and shakes his head, allowing every bit of contempt and loathing for the man sitting in front of him overtake his features. “ _God_ , Mycroft. You really have set a new bar here. You don’t get to play God, decide that he dies because he didn’t choose me. That’s not your decision to make! Did you give him a phone, at least? I know he’s disconnected his service here, but he’ll need a way to contact Kate Whitney, at the very least. And to find directions for these geographical coordinates.” 

Mycroft inhales, then stops. “Little – Sherlock. I… realise that my advice means very little to you, but I wish that you would just stop for a moment and try to be rational about this. He’s made another choice, whether or not Mary wants to reconcile. That’s what _John_ has chosen. You want me to stop interfering in your life: I would suggest that you do the same with John. Let him make his choice. Let him go.” 

Sherlock shakes his head. “There’s no _time_ , Mycroft. He doesn’t need to choose me, but I won’t have you deliberately sending him into a trap, either. The number. Now. And then you won’t see me again.” 

Mycroft swallows visibly. He looks down at his phone screen and types again, and Sherlock feels the buzz of the message in his pocket. He does not offer to arrange a flight, and that’s good because Sherlock would have refused in any case. “I hope you can understand one day that I have only ever acted out of a desire to protect you,” he says quietly. 

Sherlock shakes his head. He checks his phone to confirm that the coordinates and phone number have indeed arrived. They have. He pockets the Browning. “Goodbye, Mycroft,” he says, then turns and walks out of the office. 

He waits until he’s outside on the pavement, again unstopped by any of Mycroft’s staff on his way. He takes a breath, then begins to run, simultaneously thrusting his arm into the air for a taxi. He’s got to get to the airport, and from there to John. Before it’s too late. 

*** 

The road is paved only in gravel and after four hours, John’s feet are aching. 

He followed Mycroft’s instructions to the tee and crossed the border into Serbia after dark, checking for cameras, fencing, lights… literally anything to indicate that he was, in fact, crossing into another country at all, but there was nothing. Mycroft said that the border might be patrolled and might not be. _Great_ , John had retorted. _And what am I supposed to do if it is?_ Mycroft had merely shrugged and told him to hope for the best, and to watch his back. 

He doesn’t even know the name of the village he’s looking for. Mycroft would only give him geographical coordinates and a screenshot of its placement on a map. He said vague things about there having been ‘political troubles’, as he’d put it delicately, immediately flagging it as a massive understatement to John’s hearing. He’d stared at Mycroft. “What happened?” 

“Best you don’t know,” Mycroft had said, evasive as ever. “You’d best get going. Your flight leaves quite soon.” 

So he’d swallowed down his questions, turned and left. No baggage, apart from emotional. Mycroft told him not to take anything, citing the need to travel lightly and avoid leaving anything that could give him away. “But the Balkans are more or less calm now, aren’t they?” John had asked, not arguing exactly. “What’s all the cloak-and-dagger for?” 

Mycroft had given him long, unblinking look, then said, “This may be one instance where it would be in your best interests to attempt to trust me, Doctor Watson.” 

He hates it when Mycroft calls him that. There’s always an element of scorn to it, and maybe that’s deserved, after the morgue. _Do no harm_. He hasn’t forgotten his oath, all evidence to the contrary. He thinks of Sherlock, then very firmly forces the thought down. Even letting himself think of the letter, what Sherlock might be thinking about it right now, is not something he can allow himself to do. It’s been hard enough trying not to think about Sherlock, of never seeing him again. It’s been impossible to avoid thinking of the day Sherlock was supposed to come here, to Serbia, knowing that he was never going to come back. The parallel is impossible to avoid: this time it’s John who won’t be coming back.

Trudging down the gravel road, John pulls out the phone Mycroft gave him and checks his position. He will have to leave the dirt road at a certain point and make his way over the terrain. There is one road leading to the village, Mycroft said, but he’s to keep off it at all costs, until there’s no other option but to use it. The turn-off toward it is only just before the village, though, and John sees now that he’s nearly there. Four hundred metres later, he makes a forty-five degree turn to the northeast and starts out over the field to his left. The terrain is hilly, spotted with patches of conifers that have thinned out somewhat since his estimation of where he crossed the border. He checks the map constantly and corrects his course multiple times, the trees sometimes blocking out the light of the rising moon. It feels far later than it is in the dark of the unlit countryside, but it’s not even seven. It’s a relief when he stumbles onto the road which must be the motorway and makes his way into the village at last. 

Or what used to be a village, at least. John glances uneasily around at the darkened windows and silent streets. At least one out of every two or three buildings has sustained heavy damage – from bombing? Definitely smaller-scale fire scoring, likely from assault rifles or something similar, he thinks. Kalashnikovs or rockets, maybe. There is no sound. How could Mary possibly be here? It doesn’t seem like anyone lives here anymore. Or so he thinks until he catches the very occasional winking of light in a window very sparsely scattered here or there, but the village has the general feel of a ghost town. A pall of heaviness seems to hang in the air, the memory of horror, of devastation. The very air smells burnt and the street is scattered with the rubble of fallen buildings, grey ash heaping everything in a blanket of death. 

John comes to a concrete bridge and quietly makes his way across it. A glance over the rail shows nothing below apart from more rubble and some rubbish that looks like it’s been there for a very long time. If there was ever a river, it was a narrow one and it’s dried up now. Just beyond the bridge lies the town square, instantly recognisable from Mycroft’s description. Besides, it could hardly be anything else: the most visible structure is a clock tower that was very clearly bombed; the upper third of the building is gone completely, the tower left open to the sky at a jagged diagonal. Oddly, the clock itself still seems to be functioning. Just as John pauses there, looking at it, it strikes the hour and nearly startles him out of his skin. The sound seems too loud and for a moment of sheer, reasonless panic, John almost thinks it struck because of him, exposing him there. He waits until the seven clangs have finished echoing around empty stone square, the eery silence re-establishing itself, then turns and creeps away, attempting to stifle his paranoid panic. The coordinates Mycroft gave him look to be close, just past the square. 

He sees it a moment later: a low, single-storey dwelling attached on either side to what appear to be abandoned, partially-damaged houses. There’s a light on inside, just a single lamp, but there’s also a faint, lingering scent of cooking in the air. It’s a definite sign of life: in other words, Mary. John stops, his heart still racing unpleasantly from the clock tolling, and braces himself, trying to remember the things he wanted to say and what order to say them in. He’s got to get this right. He walks over to the door, raises his fist to knock, then stops again, wishing for the hundredth time since he landed in Sarajevo two days ago that he had his SIG. He doesn’t think that Mary would shoot him, but this is also the last place he ever would have thought to look for her on finding out that she isn’t really dead: a bombed-out village in eastern Europe. He grits his teeth and knocks. 

It takes a moment, but then there is movement within. A heavy bolt turns and the door opens two inches and Mary’s wary face appears in the opening. Her eyes widen and she pulls the door open a little wider now. “John! What the _hell_ are you doing here?”

She sounds surprised, but not shocked, not guilty at having been found to be alive after all, or anything other than irritated, and John’s anger kindles immediately. “What the hell am _I_ doing here? What the hell are _you_ doing here?” he demands. “Christ, Mary, I thought you were dead!” 

“Don’t use that name!” she hisses. Her eyes dart out into the darkened, empty street behind him. “You’d better come inside.” An arm shoots out, her fingers gripping his forearm with tendons of steel and John finds himself being unceremoniously hauled into the small dwelling without warning. Mary closes the door but leaves it unbolted and backs away, facing him from across the space. 

It appears to be a one-room house, the sole lamp burning kerosene that’s blackened the wall above it on a small table that seems to be doubling as a desk. It holds a laptop and a plate, empty save for a few crumbs scattered over it, and little else. A single bed is pushed up against one wall and the far side of the room houses a two-burner stove, a narrow counter, and a miniature fridge. It’s intensely dreary, though probably a far sight better than any of the neighbouring dwellings. This one has four intact walls and a ceiling, at least. John’s eyes track over the entirety of it in about two seconds before returning to the woman standing across from him, the woman he married. Her hair is dark now, shorter than it was when she supposedly died that day in the aquarium. Her clothes are different, too, the colours drab and the lines cut along utilitarian rather than stylistic ones. It strikes John that the small handful of changes make her seem like almost an entirely different person. The Mary he knew favoured cutesy print blouses and rolled up the cuffs of her trousers, her blond curls tucked behind her ears in a habitual gesture. This woman seems like a stranger, and her name was never Mary in the first place. “What am I supposed to call you, then?” John asks the tense, wary woman standing two metres away from him, her body language overtly defensive. 

She rolls her eyes. “It doesn’t matter. What do you want? Why are you here?” 

Her accent isn’t even English anymore. Instead, it sounds like a generic American one to his ear. The anger returns with a flush of heat. “Mary – or whoever you are – you faked your death,” John says incredulously. “Don’t you think I’m entitled to have some questions? Or that you might, just possibly, owe me an answer or two?” 

Mary exhales. “No,” she says shortly. “Can’t you take a hint, John? I know you’re not the sharpest knife in the drawer but when someone fakes their death, it might just be that they’ve decided they don’t want you in their life anymore. It’s happened to you twice now. I wonder why.” 

The fact that Mycroft already said almost the exact same thing does nothing to quiet John’s anger. “Some people might have just filed for divorce,” he says, clenching his jaw. 

“Yes, which you ‘joked’ about in front of me no less than five times in the last six months of our marriage,” Mary retorts. “You didn’t have the balls to tell me that you’d fallen out of love with me and changed your mind about marrying me. I couldn’t stand the thought of waiting around to see how long you would keep going with the charade. I lost all respect for you when the realisation came to me, and I hated you for it.”

This stings regardless of his own feelings. “Yeah, well, they say it’s a thin line between love and hate,” John grits out. “But if you want me to say it, then fine: you’re right. I don’t love you anymore, and the truth is that I’m not sure I ever did in the first place. You pushed every bit of our relationship on me, and yeah, I should have thought about it more instead of just going along with it because I couldn’t see any reason not to. I always should have known that wasn’t good enough, that I was settling for something I only felt lukewarm about. I don’t hate you. I just feel entirely indifferent about you. Although you did shoot my best friend in the heart. That didn’t help, obviously.”

Mary rolls her eyes again, as though completely exasperated with this point. “Why are you here, John?” she asks, ignoring it. “Tell me you didn’t just come all the way _here_ , of all places, to confront me over having faked my death. What do you want?” 

She’s really not going to own any of the rest of it, then, John thinks, and the thought occurs to him that he should have known this all along. She’s not going to explain herself to him, or feel something as human as remorse. God knows she never seemed to feel any for anything else in her past, so why would she start now? “It’s Rosie,” he says, cutting directly to the point. “I’ve been… made aware that I may not be her father after all. Fine if you don’t think you owe me any explanations about any of the rest of it, but this, I rather think you do owe me the truth. At the very least.” 

Mary gives a mirthless laugh, shaking her head. “Christ, John. You’re unbelievable.” 

He feels his brow furrow. “What’s that supposed to mean?” 

Mary looks at him, her face so full of contempt that it feels like a slap. “I always knew you weren’t particularly enthusiastic about being a father, but you’d really go to _this_ length to get out of it? Are you that indifferent to Rosie, too?” 

John feels his jaw drop. “Am _I_ that – Mary, you literally faked your death and abandoned her altogether! I know for a fact she’s yours – I was there when she was born, remember? The fact that you can accuse _me_ of not caring about her when you’re the one who’s run off and left her – ” He stops, realising that he’s close to shouting and that it’s probably not safe in whatever hellhole this village is. It’s certainly not particularly likely to help him get the truth from Mary, either. Or whoever she really is. He takes a deep breath. “Listen: we’re finished, you and I. Obviously. But there’s a kid here. I need to know that you’re not going to show up in six months or six years and suddenly demand her back, you and her real father, if I’m not him. Rosie’s well-being is what matters to me here.” 

“I don’t believe you,” Mary says flatly. “You’re just looking for any excuse to get out of being a father so you can run around and play detective with Sherlock.” 

John doesn’t quite understand why she might find this so difficult to believe. “Mar – ” That’s not her name, he reminds himself. “Rosie is the reason I’m here. The only reason. So tell me. I’m not leaving until I know the truth.” 

Mary narrows her eyes at him. “How did you find me, anyway? Never mind, I can guess: Sherlock never would have figured it out on his own, so it has to have been Mycroft with all of his government satellites and toys. Big Brother, always watching. Did Sherlock follow you here, then? I’ll assume so.” 

For the briefest of moments, a spark of hope ignites within John’s gut, wondering if there’s any chance in hell that Sherlock could have done it, found his trail and followed him here. Then he remembers the way the village didn’t even show on his map apps and the secrecy needed in crossing the border and the hope fades into cold bleakness again. No: this time, he is well and truly on his own, as he knew he would be if he chose this, chose to find Mary and confront her for the truth. He knew that this problem was his and his alone to face and deal with. “No,” he tells Mary firmly. “Not this time.” 

“Good,” Mary says, her voice hard. “I will not have you following me. I thought I made it pretty clear that I was done with you.”

He doesn’t even see her move, but suddenly there’s a gun in her hands, and it’s aimed directly at his head. John feels a bit stunned. “You – wouldn’t actually shoot me, would you?” he asks, but he can hear his own uncertainty and knows that Mary will have, too. 

Mary gives him a twisted smile that he’s never seen before and she looks even more like a stranger to him. “It’s not as thin a line as you thought, I’m afraid.”

She releases the safety, and before John can move or even react, his brain registers the sound of two gunshots in rapid succession ringing ear-splittingly through the small apartment. He ducks in instinctive, yet foolishly delayed reaction, seeing Mary stagger backward at the same time. The outside door bursts open behind him. There’s a third shot and this time Mary drops to the floor. John whirls around to see Sherlock stride past him without so much as a look, fury blazing tangibly off him as he bends to pluck the gun from Mary’s limp hand. 

“She _did_ fire,” Sherlock says tersely, still looking at the gun in his gloved right hand. He tosses it into a corner of the room and only then does he turn his head to look at John. His eyes are so intense that it feels like they could burn holes through John’s skull. “She would have killed you, yet you still chose her,” he says, his bitterness so thick that it could cut through a wall. Then, without waiting for a response, he sweeps past John and back out into the darkened streets. 

John is in shock. He can barely breathe, his right ear still ringing where Mary’s bullet must have just missed his head. Mary. Is she – ? He stumbles forward. Even in the dim light of the small room, it’s quite apparent that Mary is dead. Her eyes are wide and lifeless, a pool of blood spreading rapidly from beneath her head. There’s another shot in her right shoulder, bleeding into the grey fabric of the shirt she was wearing. John understands belatedly: Sherlock must have been there, outside the window. When he saw Mary’s trigger finger tighten, he shot her in the shoulder, throwing her aim off just enough to cause her to miss, then rushed inside to deal her the second, fatal shot before she had a chance to try again. He looks at the window to confirm his theory, and sure enough, there’s a perfect bullet hole in one of the panes. So Sherlock _did_ follow him, John realises, his dazed brain seeming to function even more slowly than usual. The thought is astounding. How could Sherlock have found him _here_ , at what feels like the most desolate place in the known world? Furthermore, if he was there, outside, he didn’t hear anything that was said, probably. From the sheer amount of bitterness in his voice, he must have thought John was here to reconcile things with Mary, to plead with her to come back to him or to let him stay here with her or something. Sherlock thought that – must have already thought that upon reading John’s letter – yet he still came. And just in time to save John from Mary’s bullet, too. No wonder he sounded so bitter, John thinks, wincing as the full weight of it pounds itself into the slowly-churning wheels of his brain. God. He’s got to find Sherlock. He bends to take a last look at Mary, confirming for himself that she really is dead this time. With the expression wiped clean from her face, it occurs to John that if someone had showed him a photo of this woman’s body right now, he’d have never recognised her as the woman he married. He touches two fingers to her neck for a pulse and there isn’t one. Whoever she was before, she is very much dead now and the truth about Rosie has died with her. Mycroft knows it, he knows, but he would never tell John. Not after having made his choice to leave. Either way, this issue will have to wait. His main priority now is to find Sherlock. 

Only he’s got no idea where to start. How long has it been since Sherlock left? Five minutes? Ten? Enough for a man as intelligent as he is to get a solid head start, and John has no doubt whatsoever that Sherlock has no desire to be found, at least not by him. On top of that, John realises very suddenly that Mycroft never actually gave him an exit strategy. They simply never got that far in their discussions of plans; the only goal was for him to find Mary. Was Mycroft expecting this, then? That Mary would shoot him, that he wouldn’t need a way out? He’s got no idea where he is, other than about four hours’ walk from the Bosnian border. He doesn’t speak Serbian or Bosnian and can’t even read the Cyrillic alphabet. He has no vehicle, no weapon, no information, no language skills, nothing. He doesn’t even, John realises with a bitter pang, have Sherlock’s number on this phone. He never memorised it; it was always just there on his own phone. The only number registered is one of Mycroft’s, which Mycroft told him grimly to use in the case of extreme emergency only. 

He’s got to start somewhere. John takes a deep breath, then opens the door to the house and steps out into the heavy silence of the village, half-wondering if the gunshots will have attracted local attention. They haven’t: there is no one waiting outside. If there are still people around to have heard the shots, they’ve clearly lived through enough of the village’s apparently very bloody recent history to know to stay inside when the shooting starts. John starts walking, not knowing where he’s going, knowing better than to just start shouting Sherlock’s name. Which way might he have gone? Without knowing how he came or where from, it’s impossible to have any idea where to go, where to look. John searches up and down the side streets around the house where Mary was living, winding closer and closer to the town square, then away from it again. He searches the outer reaches of the town, crosses another bridge on the eastern side, then doubles back toward the house. The few lights that were on have started flickering out one by one. The only source of illumination is coming from the nearly-full moon, and John is grateful for it, though his gratitude isn’t enough to mask his mounting desperation. He’s been down every street at least once now. He cannot find Sherlock. 

Finally, at his wits’ end, he pulls out the phone and dials the only number stored on it. After four rings, Mycroft answers and John’s heart nearly bursts in relief. “Mycroft!” he says to the cool response on the other end, not even caring how desperate he sounds. “I’ve got to find Sherlock! Tell me you know where he is!” 

There is a long pause – worryingly long. (Does Mycroft not know? Surely he’s been watching, John thinks. Maybe he’s just checking something on one of the thousands of screens his minions monitor.) “I’m afraid I can’t help you,” Mycroft says eventually, sounding very distant. If he’s surprised to discover that John is still alive, he’s hiding it well. 

He makes a gesture of frustration that Mycroft can’t see. “What? Why not?” he demands. “Have you lost track of him or something?” 

Another long pause. “Doctor Watson, I regret to tell you that I really cannot be of any assistance to you,” Mycroft says stiffly, at his most formal. The line crackles with static that nearly buries his last word. 

John can feel his blood pressure rising through the top of his head. He wants to scream, but not only would that _really_ not make Mycroft any more cooperative, it could also spell potential disaster. Even if it didn’t bring a sniper, desperate, war-torn peasant, or other human element out, the resonance alone could very well bring a half-fallen building down on his head in a rain of bricks and dust. He grips the phone tightly. “Mycroft, please,” he begs. “I’m desperate! I’ve got to find him! It’s – it’s incredibly urgent. _Please!_ ”

Mycroft is evidently unmoved. “Sherlock has disowned me as his brother,” he says acerbically. “I was given _quite_ clear orders to refrain from ever ‘interfering’ in his private matters again, even in the case of them involving an internationally-wanted assassin. It would hardly befit matters to reveal his location to you now.” 

“But you _are_ still watching,” John presses, almost holding his breath for the confirmation. “You do know where he is, right?” Another part of his mind registers the fact that Mycroft, for all his formality – no, that’s _why_ he’s being so formal – must be tremendously hurt. They must have had an absolute throwdown when Sherlock somehow deduced Mycroft’s involvement in his leaving. He waits, silently willing Mycroft to answer the question. 

He sounds very aloof when he does. “Yes.” 

John takes a deep breath. “Then – just tell me whether or not he’s still in the village. You don’t have to tell me where. But if I know that he’s here somewhere, that I stand any chance whatsoever of being able to find him on foot, I won’t stop searching until I do. _Please_ , Mycroft! Just tell me that: is he still here in the village?” 

The silence on the other end of the line seems to stretch on for an eternity. John’s palm is sweating where he’s gripping the phone and he can hear his own heartbeat pounding against his skull. Then, finally, Mycroft responds. It’s a terse, one-word answer. “Yes.” He disconnects. 

John closes his eyes for a moment of profound gratitude. Then he opens them and looks around, trying to gauge where he is. By now he’s been down every single street that wasn’t blocked by fallen buildings. He’s somewhere to the southeast of the square. He begins to jog again, keeping his tread as light as he can, retracing his path back toward the cold, dark building that houses Mary’s body, making for the village square and the eerie clock tower. Sherlock could evade him for days if he wanted, but he must have had some way of getting here. There are no trains that come here anymore, no buses. Either he came on foot, or he must have found a car somewhere, rented one or something. The point is that if he’d wanted to leave, he would have done it by now. Why has he stayed, then? Is it because he knows that John has no way to get away from here apart from walking back to Bosnia for half the night? Is he still here just to watch over and protect him, if only from a distance? Is he still trying to make up his mind? Does some part of him want to be found in spite of his anger and hurt? Wanting to be given an explanation that would somehow make things right again? (Again? For the first time, John thinks.) He’s out of breath, panting, but he can’t stop running. Not until he’s found Sherlock. 

He’s in the square, the empty windows of the buildings surrounding it staring at him like sightless eyes. Just then, a cloud shifts, unveiling the moon again, and John sees it: the tall silhouette of a man in a long coat, standing on the bridge just beyond the square, a shape he would know anywhere: Sherlock. A shock of joy and relief grips him so fiercely that for a moment he can’t even function. He begins to walk again, his heart pounding both from the exertion and from nerves. In the pall of silence that hangs over the entire, cursed village, Sherlock must hear him coming, must know that it’s him, but he doesn’t move. John stops on the bridge two metres from him and only then does Sherlock turn. His face is set but there’s uncertainty framing his mouth.

John opens his mouth, but then the breath he took gets stuck in his throat and he’s swamped by a wave of both relief at finding Sherlock at all, and emotion that he can’t seem to control at all. His breath rushes out like fire in his lungs, searing with his exertion, and it brings out some sort of subhuman sound with it. His knees give way, buckling to the pitted concrete beneath him. His palms make contact, too, scraping on the rough surface. His breathing is out of control, guttering out of him in raw, unfiltered, unchecked emotion. “Sher – I can’t believe I’ve finally found you! God!” He feels stripped down to his core, every part of whatever artifice he’s been trying to use to hide what he’s always felt for Sherlock ripped away, leaving him naked and exposed, every ugly part of him plain to see. He’s got nothing to offer. After all the other crap he pulled, he left Sherlock, told him he was never coming back. But this, at least, he could set straight. Sherlock hasn’t said anything yet and his silence feels forbidding. Never mind – he’s got to explain himself now that he’s got the chance to do it. “It wasn’t about Mary!” he gasps out, his eyes stinging. “It was never about her, or me choosing her over you!” 

Sherlock doesn’t respond right away, but when he does, John hears that same uncertainty he saw around his expressive mouth. “What was it, then?” he asks. “You… didn’t say, in your letter…”

He trails off and John shakes his head. Fuck. His letter. He should have just said it then, taken the time and explained it properly, only he’d thought it was too late and that there was no point trying to justify himself or persuade Sherlock to think any better of him. “I should have told you. It was Rosie.” He’s crying overtly now, the tears on his face hot and miserable, dripping from his chin. He can’t even bring himself to look at Sherlock. “Mycroft said – he didn’t want it to be a part of my decision. He wanted me to just choose between you and Mary, so he said there was some question about whether or not I’m Rosie’s father, and he wasn’t going to tell me.” The words are coming out in a garbled rush that he can’t stop. “That’s why I came, Sherlock. It wasn’t for Mary. That’s the truth. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I – should have just explained, but I – it felt like there was so much to say that there wasn’t even much point in starting. But I should have.” 

Sherlock is very still. “He didn’t tell me that,” he says, his voice tight. “About Rosie. He never said a word about her. He wanted me to wait until it would have been too late, wanted me to just accept it and let you go. To let it be your punishment for having chosen Mary.” 

John nods, still looking down at the pavement. He raises one hand and swipes the back of his jacket sleeve across his face. “I know. I knew that when I came, and I knew I deserved whatever might happen because of it, including never seeing you again. I – Sherlock, I – it’s been unforgiveable, the way I’ve – that day in the hospital, when I – and – all of it, Sherlock. The way I’ve treated you, over and over again. And the way I could never even just be honest about how I’ve felt from the very start. Mycroft called me on all of it, about how I’ve always felt this and never said, never let you have that – and I knew he was right. I knew I deserved to lose you. I knew coming here would be – although I wasn’t prepared for _this_ , but – I knew that whatever happened here would just be the consequences I deserved for the rest of it. Mycroft told me, too – to let you go. Let you move on without me, and I thought he was right. That you deserved that.” The tears are still surging from his eyes in streams, impossible to contain now that they’ve started. 

Sherlock takes a deep, careful breath. “You said something in your letter, about something more that you might have said… was it… ”

He stops, and John nods at the pavement again, still unable to look at him, but beyond ready to own all of it at last. “Yes! It was all that stuff I should have said from the very start,” he says fiercely. “I _was_ asking, that first dinner. About your status, about whether or not you might – I wanted that then and I never stopped. Never once. But I denied it every time it came up, and by the time you died, or I thought you – I’d painted myself into a corner, and then that day – I felt like half of me died, too. I was half-insane with it, both with grief and regret over all the stuff I’d never said, and then when you came back, I just – ”

“John. Stop. Please,” Sherlock says, mercifully cutting into the stream of words. “Don’t – torture yourself like this.” 

John shakes his head. “I don’t deserve – _anything_ from you. Am I why you’re still here? Because you knew I didn’t have a way out of this godforsaken hellhole?” 

“Please,” Sherlock says again, his voice low. “Would you just – look at me?” 

John closes his eyes, but sits back on his heels, then grits his teeth together and makes himself look up at Sherlock. The expression on Sherlock’s face is one he’s never seen before, deeply sombre, and something about it makes John’s chest ache. 

“I made you a vow,” Sherlock tells him soberly. “I know you told me that you weren’t coming back. The implication that I should not follow was quite clear. But once I knew where you had gone, I couldn’t just let you walk into danger. Even if you had come for the reason I thought you had. And I would never have willingly left you behind here. I – was upset. And unsure of how to… behave toward you. But I never for an instant actually considered leaving you here.” 

“I don’t deserve your protection,” John says, his throat feeling raw. He feels abjectly unworthy in every possible way. “And I don’t deserve any kindness from you, either, after everything I’ve done.” 

“I hate seeing you like this,” Sherlock says quietly. “Would you just – come here?” He holds out a hand, and John looks at it and sees the hand Sherlock offered him the day he thought he was being sent back here to die. He could have said so much that day – about having saved Mary (and him by extension) from Magnussen, about Mary’s shot, about John’s unconfessed feelings. He could have professed his own and let John wallow in the discomfort of it. But he made a joke instead and let John off the hook yet again. He just keeps extending John new chances, undeserved as they’ll all been. And maybe he was wrong to believe Mycroft that the right choice was to refuse taking yet another one, that it would be better to leave Sherlock behind, hopefully to one day find someone better. Maybe Sherlock doesn’t want someone better. Maybe all he wants is for John to take his hand. 

He takes a deep breath, then puts his hand into Sherlock’s. The next moment he finds himself being hauled to his feet and into Sherlock’s arms, and it feels like coming home at last after having been stood out in the cold for years. He puts his arms around Sherlock’s back and the tears resurge into full flood. He’s sobbing, well beyond the point of his own control. Sherlock doesn’t seem to mind at all. His arms feel like a fortress around John, the only solid thing in this world of ghosts and ashes and rubble and he never wants to leave them. 

Sherlock just goes on holding him, stroking over John’s hair and back of his neck over and over again, not trying to stem the flow or tell him to stop, to pull himself together. “It’s all right, John,” he murmurs, his fingers gentle in John’s hair. “It’s all right now.” 

“I don’t deserve you,” John says again, his eyes closed tightly. “But if you’ll have me back, in any way at all, God – that’s all I want. You’re all I want, all I’ve wanted since longer than I can say.”

“You’re not the only one who never said,” Sherlock tells him, his voice more tender than John’s ever heard it. “If I had been a lot wiser a lot sooner, deduced the true nature of my own feelings and found some way to articulate them to you… but I never did, and by the time I knew it for what it was, it was too late.” 

John’s chest clenches hard. “I would give anything for it not to be too late. Anything.” 

Sherlock pulls back far enough to look him in the eye, and his face holds all the same tenderness as his voice, flooding over and into John. “It isn’t. Not anymore.” 

A wild hope streaks through John, searing his heart. He opens his mouth to speak, to ask, but the right words don’t come, trapped in his throat, leaving him helplessly muzzled and unable to articulate the one thing he needs to say above anything else. 

But Sherlock looks at him and seems to understand, and his eyes are compassionate. “I love you,” he says, the words almost unbearably intimate. “I will always love you. I am incapable of not loving you. It’s in the very foundations of who I am. You leaving cannot change that. You choosing someone else, if you had, cannot change that. It’s simply a fact.” 

John hears his own breath rush out, trembling, then back in again in a gasp. He closes the short gap between them swiftly and kisses Sherlock. It’s the only response he’s capable of making, but it seems to be the only one Sherlock cares about anyway, kissing back without hesitation. His mouth is strong on John’s, arms still curved around his shoulders as John clings to him in something very much like desperation. They kiss and kiss, standing there in this deserted, desolate corner of the earth, and for now none of the rest of it matters at all. Sherlock kisses as though it’s a bit unfamiliar to him, but he’s catching on quickly, unadorned need driving it forward, and there’s nothing uncertain about it whatsoever, about the sheer level of want behind it. Finally neither one of them is pretending or disseminating or hiding from it. It took all of it escalating to _this_ point, but they’re finally here, John thinks, dizzy with it, feeling so much that he thinks he could implode from the very volume of it. Finally, some time later, the kiss winds down, but they don’t move any further apart. “I love you, too,” John says, the words getting themselves organised and out his mouth at last, and it’s such a relief to say it out loud. “I think I always have. I’m so sorry it took me so long. For everything I’ve put you through.” 

Sherlock shakes his head minutely. “Stop,” he says, the word infinitely gentle. “I don’t care. I don’t care at all anymore. I’m just relieved beyond measure that I got to you in time.” 

John sees Mary’s face and the gun in her hands again and shivers, knowing that Sherlock can feel it. “So am I,” he says. “Thank you. _God._ Thank you for coming after me, even thinking I’d gone back to Mary.” 

“I couldn’t just let you walk into this alone,” Sherlock says. “When Mycroft told me that he’d sent you _here_ … ” He stops. “It’s quiet right now, but that’s not always the case, or at least it wasn’t, when… and the Mary factor was – unsettling. When I got your letter, I assumed she must have reached out, instigating a reconciliation. When I discovered that she hadn’t, I was – quite worried about her potential response.” 

“With good reason, obviously.” John searches his eyes. “Mary even asked me if you’d followed me, and for half a second I wondered if there was any way that you possibly could have, but rational thought said there was no chance, given how hard it was to even find this place – I was so sure that I was on my own.” 

“I will never leave you on your own,” Sherlock vows, his voice low. “Never, John. I will always be there. I told you: I made you a vow. And I don’t intend to break it. Not now, nor any other time.” 

John’s eyes swim again and he swallows hard. “I’ll never leave you, either,” he says, his throat tight. “I promise, Sherlock. I’ll never leave you again.” 

This time it’s Sherlock who moves first, bending to claim his mouth again, and they stand there in the moonlight on the bridge and if there’s anyone there to witness it, John doesn’t know and doesn’t care. After a bit, the clock tower strikes, startling them apart. Sherlock strokes a hand over his hair again. “Did you get your answer, about Rosie?” he asks. “I meant to ask…” 

John shakes his head. “No,” he says bitterly. “I was an idiot to have ever thought she would. She never would have told me.” 

“Well, we can make Mycroft give you the results, since he clearly knows,” Sherlock says, his tone a bit sharp, but John knows that the sharpness isn’t aimed at him. 

“He told me you disowned him,” John says. “When I couldn’t find you, I phoned him, and he said.” 

“I did,” Sherlock says shortly. “But then he texted me, after you spoke to him.” 

“Did he? What did he say?” John asks. 

Sherlock’s face is serious. “He said that he knew that I didn’t want to hear from him, but that you’d called and were desperate to find me. That if I wanted to be found, I should put myself somewhere where you could find me. He promised it was his last piece of interference.” 

“I’m glad,” John says fiercely. “I’m so glad he did.” 

“So am I, now.” Sherlock glances around. “It’s ten,” he says. “We should leave. We don’t want to be here through the night.” 

John agrees rather devoutly, though he’s short on the details of how that might be brought about. “Sherlock – what happened to this place?” he asks. 

Sherlock’s jaw tightens a little. “Mary happened to it,” he says briefly. 

John gapes at him. “This is _Mary’s_ doing? _All_ of it? But – how? _When?_ ”

For a moment Sherlock doesn’t answer, looking toward the square and the damaged clock tower. “The manipulation of circumstances to bring this about, certainly. It… would have taken some time. The initial events would have begun, by my calculations, about four months before you met her. Once the pieces were in place, it only needed setting into motion and she provided that, too.”

John processes this, his eyes still on Sherlock’s face. “Why would she have come back here?” he asks, feeling bewildered. “I mean – she would have known better than anyone what it had become. I don’t get it.”

Sherlock shrugs. “Perhaps she considered it a trophy, of sorts,” he says. “Perhaps she came back to gloat. Or perhaps she simply thought it would be the last place anyone might think to look for her. I don’t know.” He opens his mouth, possibly to change the subject, but there’s one more thing John needs to know. 

“And – you were here?” he asks, not wanting to push Sherlock for it, but wanting to know. “During your time away?” 

Sherlock nods, though, not refusing him. “Right at the height of it. I was captured, not all that far from here, though I didn’t know precisely where I was at the time. I was – running. They brought me here. I never thought I would make it out. It’s where Mycroft finally intervened.” 

John understands. “And – this is where they were going to send you back?” 

Sherlock nods again. “I didn’t think much of the chances of my making it out alive twice, and neither did Mycroft. He gave it six months, though we both knew it would have been more like two or three at most.” 

John shakes his head in wonder. “And yet you came back here, willingly, for me,” he says. He uncurls one arm from around Sherlock’s back to put a hand on his face and kisses him lingeringly, twice, then again. “I can’t even believe you,” he murmurs, feeling overwhelmed by the very amount he feels for Sherlock. “God, Sherlock! Thank you. Thank you for saving me again.” 

Sherlock seems to be having trouble talking; his mouth is open between John’s kisses, breathing and breathing and then remembering to kiss back. “I’ll never stop”, he says, as though remembering to speak. 

Their next kiss goes on for some time, until John remembers where they are and attempts to pull himself together a bit. “Do you have a way out of here?” he asks. “I’ve got nothing. Absolutely nothing. No transportation, no gun, hardly any money, no language skills, no knowledge of my surroundings – nothing.”

Sherlock smiles down at him, the moonlight turning his eyes silver-green. “You’ve got _me_ ,” he reminds John. “And as it happens, I have all of those things. Including a car. It’s just a few streets over. Come on.” 

“Amazing,” John says in relief. They turn and start walking, and John finds Sherlock’s hand and holds it, unable to stop touching him completely. “How did you get here?” he asks. 

Sherlock cautions him away from a fragment of something explosive. “I hired a private charter and flew to a tiny airport in Rujanska. It’s not far from here,” he explains, seeing John’s confusion. “It took three hours. I arranged for a car and a weapon in the air, then drove like a bat out of hell, ditched the car, and ran toward the coordinates I forced Mycroft to give me. I had only been there at the window for five minutes when Mary pulled the gun on you. I was just so relieved to see that you were still alive, but alarmed enough to find you already there in the house with her – ” He stops, his fingers tightening around John’s. “That was too close.”

“But you made it,” John says. “I’m the idiot who should have known. I didn’t think it through. I mean, I thought about it for an entire night, but I still just didn’t – get there. I didn’t think she would actually try to kill me rather than give me a straight answer about Rosie. Or anything else.” 

“Accountability was not her strong suit,” Sherlock says dryly. He nods toward a nondescript dark car parked by the side of the road just ahead. “There it is. Let me just check it for car bombs. In this village, one cannot be too careful.” 

John watches Sherlock peer to examine the underside of the car. “You know, Mycroft never even told me what this village is called,” he says. 

Sherlock straightens up and avoids eye contact, fishing the car keys from his coat pocket. “Does it matter?” he asks, unlocking the doors and only then looking over at John. “Whatever it once was, that place doesn’t exist any more. Let it be nameless now.” 

John accepts this. “Okay,” he says, not questioning it. Sherlock’s memories of this place can only be traumatic, and he knows better than to push. He climbs into the passenger side of the car, feeling out of place – normally this would be the driver’s side – and thinks of the parallel between this destroyed village and him and Sherlock, neither of them ever giving name to what they’ve felt for each other all along. Only they’re going to fix the thing John thought he left behind him in ruins. They’ve named it now, and they’re going to build something new and unbelievably good. There’s so much that’s happened in only a matter of days – hours, even – that he’s got a lot to process. But this is definitely very, very good. “Where should we go?” he asks, not even caring. He doesn’t know the area, anyway. As long as they go together, their destination doesn’t matter to him one bit. 

“Back to Višegrad, I thought,” Sherlock says, gingerly turning the key in the ignition. The car starts without anything untoward happening, no explosions. “I would very much like to leave this country and never come back. I’m sure there are lovely parts of it. But I have no desire to spend a minute longer than we need to here.” 

“Agreed,” John says at once. “Višegrad it is.” 

Sherlock gives him a half-smile at this, puts the car into gear and begins to drive. “I can’t believe you walked all the way from Batkovica,” he says, and John hears the unspoken request to let the entire subject of Serbia drop. 

It’s literally the very least he could do, and John drops it without another word. “It was long,” he admits. “And creepy, honestly. Mycroft wanted me to wait until the sun had set to cross the border, which makes sense, but – yeah.” He turns his head to look at Sherlock, who is speeding down the motorway he was forbidden to walk down. “Are we going to have an issue at the border?” he asks. “I’ve got my passport…”

“I have a story prepared,” Sherlock says briskly. “You don’t speak the language, so I’ll do the talking. We were here in Belgrade for business, decided to travel into Bosnia just for some sight-seeing, didn’t realise how long the drive would take. I’m hoping to sell a convincing act as an uninformed Brit who didn’t research the local terrain.” 

“That sounds good,” John says, relaxing a little. “Why Višegrad? I haven’t got any objections. Just curious.” 

Sherlock shrugs. “It’s the closest place likely to have a hotel,” he says, very slightly diffident, and John imagines it because the entire question of a hotel and the two of them staying in one together raises all sorts of other questions. 

He feels a flush of heat in his face and clears his throat. He decides to change the subject. “How did you find out that Mycroft was – part of this?” he asks. 

“That he was behind it, you mean,” Sherlock says darkly. He squints at a roadside sign. “I think that means we’re getting close to the border. And to answer your question, Kate Whitney.” 

John is confused. “What? What do you mean?” 

For a minute or two, Sherlock is quiet. Then he says, “I… didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t make myself accept the idea that there was no hope of ever seeing you again. Finally it occurred to me that if you had left Rosie with Kate, you would surely come back for her at some point. I went to ask Kate if she would tell me when you were coming. To – I don’t know, beg you to allow me to continue occupying some small corner of your life, I suppose.” He clears his throat, too. “It was the only thing I could think of. You had already shut off your phone and left the country by that point.” 

John thinks of Sherlock texting him and finding out that the text couldn’t be delivered, of knowing that he hadn’t even read it, and a hard edge comes into his throat. “Oh, Sherlock,” he says softly. “Christ. I’m so sorry.” 

Sherlock shakes his head a little. “It’s all right now,” he reminds John. “Anyway, when I was there, she said that Mycroft had been by, with an offer of help about Rosie.” 

John scowls, thinking about it. “You mean, in the event that I didn’t come back and Kate found herself saddled with a baby she agreed to watch for an undefined ‘little while’ – I think those were the words I used – indefinitely once Mary shot me.” 

“Something like that,” Sherlock agrees, his tone speaking volumes of what he thinks of that. 

There are lights ahead: the border. John holds his breath as Sherlock exchanges several lines in what sounds like rather passable Serbian (or is it Bosnian? John’s got no idea) with the border agent, deploying a light and rather fake laugh with the last one, but the guard laughs, too, saying something that makes Sherlock agree. Their passports are examined, stamped, then handed back and they’re waved through and John exhales. “That sounds like it went well,” he says as Sherlock rolls up the window and drives away. 

“It did,” Sherlock confirms. “They seem to have bought the story. I said that we’re travelling to Sarajevo now, might look for a hotel to stop at earlier, then maybe down to Dubrovnik and the coast. He told me that it’s probably further than we think. That’s when I laughed. He asked if we’re coming back into Serbia and I said no, that we’ll leave from either here in Bosnia or maybe Croatia, and that seemed to satisfy him.” 

“Well done,” John approves. He settles a little further into his seat and only then realises how tense his shoulders have been probably since he left Sarajevo. The full impact of all of this is going to hit at some point, but not tonight. Now that they’re past the border, all he wants to think about is finding a hotel. With Sherlock. He’d sort of like to know what Sherlock is thinking about this, can palpably feel him thinking about it, too, but it feels a bit too delicate to ask about, especially so soon. He’s still swamped with relief that Sherlock still wants him at all. 

They reach the town after a little while. “Did you stay somewhere when you were here?” Sherlock asks, slowing down and making a right turn with some caution, possibly unused to driving on the opposite side. 

John shakes his head. “No. Mycroft put me on an overnight train from Sarajevo to here. I sort of recognise it, though.” 

“Hmm, let’s see…” Sherlock peers out the windows into the darkened village. “Ah. That might be a hotel.” He stops at the far end of the street at a three- or four-storey building. There’s a sign on in the window and lights on the ground floor. “Let’s try this,” he proposes, so John agrees and they get out of the car. 

It is a hotel, as it turns out. There’s a large woman with a very restricting hairstyle sitting behind a desk in the dimly-lit foyer. She asks a question that doesn’t sound overly friendly per se, her eyes travelling suspiciously over John. He’s very aware that it must be after eleven by now and that they’re two men in eastern Europe, wanting a hotel room. He avoids her gaze and tries not to look awkward, but his focus is much more on Sherlock, anyway, wondering what he’s asking for. The woman says something, and Sherlock reaches into an inside pocket of his coat and pulls out some cash, maybe forty Euros, puts them down in front of the woman and says something firm. The woman looks at the cash, then nods, fishes about in a drawer and gives Sherlock a key, saying something. He nods and says something back. “Come on,” he says to John, briskly, and makes for a narrow stairwell to the left. 

John follows him, feeling foolishly aware of his utter lack of luggage, and hopes the woman doesn’t think he’s an escort or something. Not that her opinion really matters to him, but still. Sherlock turns at the landing, then reaches back for his hand, and John takes it, his chest glowing. 

“We’re in room 12,” Sherlock tells him, but there’s a myriad of things playing around the corners of his mouth and John wants to kiss them all away, and immediately resolves to as soon as they’re inside. 

_We’re in_ , he said: Sherlock got them a room together, then. John feels the warmth in his chest plunge into his gut and nervously hopes his breath is okay. Then he remembers that Sherlock didn’t seem to have any particular objection to kissing him earlier, so maybe that’s all right.

They climb to the third storey and Sherlock nods toward the door of #12. “Here we are,” he says, his tone light enough, but there’s a myriad of other stuff beneath it. He fits the key to the lock and opens the door, then stands back to let John go in first. 

It’s nothing luxurious, not that John cares in the slightest. The only thing occupying his attention is the fact that there is very definitely only one bed. Well: that certainly clears some things up, as far as what Sherlock is thinking about this, he thinks. 

Sherlock clears his throat. “Is this – okay?” he asks, sounding a bit apprehensive. 

John looks at him and nods, feeling his heart in his throat. “Very okay,” he confirms. “What did you say to the lady downstairs?” 

Sherlock’s mouth quirks a little. “I asked her the price for a room with one bed, then gave her double what she said and told her no questions. She accepted.” He searches John’s face. “I – couldn’t think of how to raise the subject, in the car. But you’re not – this isn’t too – ”

He doesn’t seem to know how to finish the question. John hears himself give a huff of laughter. “No,” he says. “Not at all! I’m a bit astonished that it’s not too soon or too much or whatever you were going to say for _you_. I’m not objecting in any way here.” 

Sherlock still looks hesitant. “Nothing needs to happen, per se,” he says. “I mean – we could just – sleep. You must be exhausted, for starters – you spent last night on a train, walked for hours to the village, experienced the woman you married attempt to kill you, then get shot herself, then everything with you and I… if it’s all just a little much at the moment, I completely understand. I can always go back down and ask for a different – ”

“Stop!” John can’t take it anymore. “Sherlock – this is what I was most hoping for. Okay? I find it almost hilarious to have you being the one saying all this stuff, about how nothing has to happen yet – I thought that would be me. You’re right, it’s been a hell of a forty-eight hours or so, particularly the last few, but right now this is all I’m thinking about.” He closes the small space between them and takes hold of the lapels of Sherlock’s coat, looking first at Sherlock’s mouth, then up to his eyes. “You and me. Right here. Right now.” 

“John – ” Sherlock ducks swiftly in to kiss him. It’s hungry on both sides and only grows from there. Their mouths are open, tongues pressing into each other’s, arms around each other, hands gripping each other’s backs and shoulders. 

John discovers a few moments later that he’s got Sherlock backed up into the wall beside the door and wonders if he should slow down a little. He’s fairly certain that Sherlock’s experience is extremely limited at best. He pulls back, licking his lips. “ _You’re_ – sure, about this?” he asks. “I mean – honestly, I don’t really know what I’m doing, either, with – ”

Sherlock’s eyes probe his deeply, his pupils flooding the blue of his irises. “You’ve never?” he asks.

John can feel his heart thudding into his own chest. He shakes his head. “No. This is – anything we do right now will be, er, pretty new for me, too.” 

Sherlock’s lips part and his breath is warm on John’s. “You must know by now that I’ve never done this, either – with anyone.” His eyelids are at half-mast, his voice low and John finds it intensely seductive in spite of the unvarnished words. “But I want to,” Sherlock tells him, his voice rather intense. “I’ve wanted to for so long. This isn’t – rushing. This is long overdue, in my opinion. So – please, John. I – want this more than I can tell you. Want _you_.” 

John feels his heart dissolve completely, and realises that he’s hard as anything in his jeans, too. “Oh God, yes,” he breathes, and Sherlock pushes himself off the wall, launching himself at John and propelling them both toward the bed. His hands are already scrabbling at John’s clothes and John manages to keep his wits about himself only long enough to start pulling at Sherlock’s, too, starting with his coat. This gets dropped to the floor and his fingers find the buttons of Sherlock’s shirt next, kissing him with everything he’s got at the same time. Sherlock’s fingers strip every creased, sweaty stitch of his third-day clothing off him in seconds, then turn to helping John get him out of his trousers, leaving him in only his underwear. John remembers at that precise moment that he hasn’t showered since yesterday morning and that he’s been wearing the same clothes since he left London. He’s sweaty from the four-hour walk into Serbia, the nerves of being in the village at all, plus his frantic run through the place in search of Sherlock after. His face is probably grimy from both sweat and tears, too. What he really needs right now is a shower, but it doesn’t exactly seem like the time to say so. 

Sherlock pauses, breaking off the kiss to look down the length of John’s nude form, his heart thudding visibly in his chest and neck, his eyes taking in John’s stiff erection. He swallows. “You’re – ” He stops. “You’re exactly the way I always imagined. Only – better.” 

John feels his heart swell impossibly. The shower can wait, then. “So are you,” he manages. He wonders if Sherlock is equally nervous about being naked in front of him. He runs his palms over Sherlock’s lean hips, up the length of his back and is careful to avoid looking in turn, not wanting to make Sherlock feel self-conscious. “I’ve been dying to see you,” he confesses, his voice punctured by breath. “Can I – ?” His hands are at the waistband of Sherlock’s briefs, but he wants to wait for confirmation before he even touches him anywhere else. 

Sherlock’s throat bobs as he swallows again, but he nods. “Yes.” He hesitates, then starts taking off his underwear himself, John’s hands helping once he’s started. Sherlock bends a little to step out of the second leg hole, then straightens up, looking every bit as exposed and vulnerable as John suspected he might. He’s also every bit as hard as John, nerves notwithstanding, his cock pointed upward, flushed against the paleness of his skin, the foreskin already rolled back. 

John’s mouth fills with saliva, seeing it. “God,” he breathes. “You’re _incredible_ , Sherlock.”

Sherlock’s lips part and he claims John’s mouth again, his hands coming up belatedly to touch John’s back, his sides, and there’s so much reverence in his touch that John is practically gasping with it, allowing himself to do the same, let his fingertips travel over the expanse of Sherlock’s newly-revealed skin. It feels more intimate than anything he’s ever experienced, and it’s only just begun. Sherlock is trembling palpably but kissing him deeply, his hands occasionally coming up to cradle John’s face before going back to touching him. 

John shifts a little closer and finally permits himself to stroke lower, over the firm curves of Sherlock’s incredible arse, and he feels the breath huff out of Sherlock’s mouth near his ear, hot and sensual. “Okay?” he murmurs, turning his face into Sherlock’s jaw line to suck gently at the hard corner of it, then lower to lip at his neck. 

“Mm – yes.” Sherlock’s voice is low, his head tipped back to allow John better access. His hands slide down to touch John the same way, his hands the perfect size for it, and John moves closer still to allow them to touch all the way down their fronts and Sherlock inhales sharply. “John – ”

His fingers are gripping John, pulling them closer together. Their cocks and thighs and chests are touching, their arms wrapped tightly around each other, and John can’t think when he’s ever felt this much before, ever. This feels like so much more than sex, because it is – it’s everything they both feel, a little bit uncertain but absolutely drowning in desire for each other, in the need to physicalize it in a profoundly tangible way. They’re moving jointly toward the bed now, John clawing the rather eighties-looking bedspread out of the way. He gets in first, pulling Sherlock in beside him and they shift closer, facing each other as they kiss, legs tangling together. Neither of them really knows what to do or how, but instinct seems to be more than enough, John thinks dizzily. He makes the first move to reach down between them as they kiss, his fingers finding Sherlock’s cock of their own accord, and Sherlock exhales hard through his nose, moving to mirror him. John hears himself groan, his cock practically leaping into Sherlock’s palm. It feels so good. Every place where they’re touching seems to feel trebly alive, his nerve endings responding to Sherlock as though every skin cell is electrically lit, every hair on his skin standing up in hyper-awareness of Sherlock body, his breath, his warmth. Their knees bump as they shift closer still. John gets a knee up around Sherlock’s hip and Sherlock makes a sound of agreement, pulling John onto him as he turns onto his back, and that’s – John moans, feeling the soft hairiness of Sherlock’s balls directly against his as their cocks strain together. Lube would be good, but it doesn’t even matter right now. Feeling all of Sherlock’s long body and limbs against his is more than enough. “You feel so good,” he gasps out between kisses. “God, Sherlock – ”

Sherlock is rocking up against him, the friction between them building deliciously, unstoppably. “I – know,” he gets out, his voice all breath. “I – John, I – ” He breaks off, moaning, all ten fingers gripping John’s arse as John thrusts against the hot, hard length of him. “Ah – !”

His voice is rising and John thinks that he sounds a bit uncertain. He might almost be there, might need the reassurance that it’s okay to get there whenever he does. “Yes, that’s it – God, Sherlock, you’re phenomenal, that’s incredible, it’s so good – ” he pants. He bends to nuzzle with his teeth at a spot just under Sherlock’s ear and that seems to do it. Sherlock’s entire body spasms, thrusting up against John and his voice chokes in his throat, his eyes squeezing shut. There’s a hot pulse of wetness between them, then another, another, and John can hear the indecent sounds he’s making, the added slick of the wet heat more stimulus than he even needed. Sherlock is still coming, almost hyperventilating, and John can’t hold himself back any more, Sherlock’s cock shuddering against his. He closes his eyes and hears himself shout as his body blazes into his orgasm, pumping out what feels like streams of release between them, all over Sherlock’s flat belly and chest. He’s held in the grip of his peak for several long, glorious moments, his cock juddering out against Sherlock’s, and then it ebbs from his limbs, leaving him weak. 

Sherlock’s hands are moving over his back, his fingers gentle, the urgency gone, though his chest is still heaving, his breath hot and fast in John’s hair. “That was…” 

After a moment, John manages to raise his face from where he let it drop into the crook of Sherlock’s neck and shoulder, looking down into Sherlock’s eyes. “It really was,” he agrees fervently, and Sherlock huffs a short laugh. John puts a hand on Sherlock’s forehead and strokes through his tousled curls. “That was like nothing I’ve ever felt before,” he says, serious now. “I mean that, Sherlock.”

Sherlock swallows, still breathing hard. “It was… life-changing,” he says, looking up into John’s eyes. “Profoundly so.” 

John’s heart is in his throat. “I love you,” he says. There’s a release in saying it every time, an easing of the tension of having held it in for so long, the words left to fossilise somewhere deep within him, unacknowledged and unuttered. Saying it is healing, somehow, for both of them. He lowers his mouth to Sherlock’s and lets himself feel it all, awash with it, and Sherlock puts his arms around him and holds him tightly, kissing back just as passionately. They’re both completely exposed now, John thinks blurrily, every attempt either of them has ever made to hide what they’ve both felt utterly stripped away, and it feels good. It feels right. 

Time slides away into meaninglessness. Eventually they resurface, lying on their sides again, legs still twined together, fingers twisting together or travelling away to touch, explore, caress. “This feels almost illegal,” Sherlock says at one point, and John has to laugh. 

He gets it, though. “I know. After hiding it for so long, to finally just be able to – touch you this way. Be with you. Admit it. Say it.” 

Sherlock searches his eyes. “How do you feel?” he asks. “Do you want to talk about… any of the rest of it?”

John shrugs a little. “Not really?” he tries. “Right now, this is the only thing that matters to me.” 

Sherlock bites his lip a little. “I suppose I’m asking with specific concern about – this,” he admits. “I mean… I did kill your wife. There is that. I suppose I’m trying to ascertain whether that might… need discussion. Or pose any issues, I suppose.” 

John gives a short laugh. “You mean, you saved me from being killed by _her_ ,” he points out. “I mean – I know what you’re saying, but – no, we’re good. I promise.” 

Sherlock smiles then. “All right,” he says, accepting it. He looks down between them. “Is this much mess – customary?” 

John grins. “Sex _is_ messy,” he says. “Though when it comes to two men, I really wouldn’t know. Maybe I’ll go find us a towel or something.” 

Sherlock makes a sound of objection and burrows closer, dipping his face into John’s neck. “Don’t go anywhere. Stay right where you are.” 

John hears himself giggle, his voice high and silly. “Just to clean up,” he tries, but Sherlock’s mouth is thoroughly distracting. This swiftly turns into breathy exhalations, their hands finding each other hard again, and this time they stick with this, rubbing and stroking each other through the sticky mess, which leads to a second, gentler climax, less urgent but more playful, only about forty minutes after the first one.

As John recovers from this one, still panting, Sherlock kisses his neck. “All right, maybe a flannel,” he says, the words muffled as his presses his mouth into John’s hot skin. 

“Oh, now you’ll let me?” John grins, inwardly still marvelling that this is happening at all. 

“Mmm. If you’re quick about it,” Sherlock says lazily, but opens his eyes to smirk at him in turquoise crescents. 

John’s heart does another somersault in his chest and he realises afresh that he is absolutely helpless to do anything to stop the utter emotional freefall he’s in now, but it’s okay. It really is. “Okay,” he says aloud, and pulls himself out of Sherlock’s arms and the bed to pad naked to the loo to wet a flannel. He cleans himself up there, rinses the flannel and notes that he looks tired and old and grimy, but very, very happy. He smiles at himself in the mirror, shaking his head at the same time. How the hell did this day actually finish like _this_? He turns away and shuts off the light, going back to Sherlock. “I can’t actually believe this, you know,” he says, sliding over to him and beginning to gently clean Sherlock’s skin. 

Sherlock smiles a little, his eyes soft. “I was just thinking the same thing,” he says. “It feels surreal. As of this morning, I still thought I might never see you again. Then the rush to get here in time, finding you in the village, in the house with Mary – and now this. It’s – beyond belief.” 

He’s lying still, not resisting as John passes flannel over him, rubbing a little where he needs to. “I know,” John says quietly. “This isn’t how I thought this day was going to go, either. I don’t know what I thought would happen, but definitely not this. I hadn’t given any thought beyond finding Mary and demanding that she tell me the truth. I don’t know that I even thought about an after. Not even about getting out again.”

Sherlock swallows visibly. “I’m glad I found you.” It’s all he says, but the intensity behind it makes John’s chest hurt. 

He tosses the flannel away in favour of pulling Sherlock back into his arms, their mouths coming together jointly, as though they’ve been doing this for years already. And maybe that’s because they should have been, John thinks fiercely. Meanwhile, the weight of everything that’s happened, the lack of sleep, the rush and stress of finding Mary in that terrible village is mixing with the intense relaxation of his muscles following two orgasms. Feeling completely secure in Sherlock’s arms, John finally lets himself relax all the way, only realising now how much tension he was still holding onto. As soon as he decides to let go of it, a wave of sleep washes over him. John gives in to it at last, letting it sweep him out to sea like the tide. Sherlock is here. They’re together. Everything is going to be okay now. 

*** 

John wakes with Sherlock’s breath on his forehead and sunlight streaming in through the third-storey windows. For a moment he’s disoriented, but then last night comes back to him. “Hi,” he gets out, his voice hoarse from sleep. 

Sherlock smiles and lays a hand on his face, his thumb touching the corner of John’s mouth. “Hi,” he says back. “Welcome back to the land of the living. Or the conscious, I suppose.” 

John blinks and yawns. “Have I been out for awhile?” 

Sherlock nods, still smiling. “It’s after one in the afternoon. You were dead to the world. And you needed it,” he adds, reassuring him. “You’d barely slept in days.” 

John stretches hugely, turning onto his back. “I’m sorry,” he says anyway, feeling a bit sheepish. “Must have been a bit boring for you.” 

“I didn’t mind in the slightest,” Sherlock tells him, his face looking more relaxed and openly affectionate than John has ever seen him look before, and suddenly he really needs to kiss him again. 

“Come here,” he requests, and Sherlock comes obligingly, not resisting as John reaches for his face and pulls his mouth back to his own. He has a passing thought of hoping that his breath isn’t too horrendous, but Sherlock doesn’t seem to be objecting. He’s wearing underwear but nothing else, John discovers, moving his hand from Sherlock’s face to his side, then around his back to pull him in closer. “What have you been doing all morning?” he murmurs after, his eyes tracking over Sherlock’s beautiful face. (God, he’s been an idiot! They could have had this all along.) 

Sherlock is pliant in his arms. “Not very much,” he says. “Sleeping – I slept until about ten, too. Then the lady from downstairs knocked and it woke me.” 

“What did she want?” John asks. 

“To know if we’re staying another night. I gave her some more money and made her go away,” Sherlock says. “I also got her to take your clothes and launder them. She only just brought them back about twenty minutes ago. It’s probably what started to wake you. I tried to be very quiet about getting back into bed, though. I wanted to be here with you when you woke up.” 

John feels touched by this. “I’m glad you were,” he says. “After last night, I wouldn’t have wanted to find myself alone.” 

Sherlock shakes his head a little. “I promised I would never leave you,” he reminds John. “I thought you might be disoriented, considering how much has happened. And – I wanted you to remember what happened with – this.” His face comes closer and his touches his mouth to John’s. “Us.” 

John looks from Sherlock’s mouth to his eyes. “Were you worried I might have forgotten?” he asks. He really wants to just kiss him again, but this seems important to check. 

Sherlock hesitates very briefly. “It’s – new,” he points out. “I thought – with everything that happened yesterday, I just – wanted to establish a physical reminder. As it were.” 

John smiles and keeps his voice gentle. “I’m not going to change my mind,” he says softly. “Not after it’s taken us so long to get here. Me. I’m there now. All in. I promise.” 

The corners of Sherlock’s mouth tighten a little. “Good,” he says, his eyes intense. 

John reaches for him and kisses him again, unable to resist this in any way, opening his mouth to Sherlock and shifting closer to press himself to the warmth of Sherlock’s body, his palms travelling over Sherlock’s sides and long back. Sherlock is doing the same, not holding back in a way that makes John feel glad down to the core, knowing that Sherlock feels comfortable enough to touch him like this, like he’s fully permitted to. Because he _is_ , and John wants nothing more for him to know and believe it completely. His fingers find the waistband of Sherlock’s underwear. “Why are you wearing these?” he asks, only pulling back enough to get the words out. 

“Mm – ” Sherlock is having trouble keeping his mouth off John’s long enough to answer. “Because the – lady knocked and – I didn’t want to pull the sheet off you – ” A longer kiss interrupts him, but he’s already fighting to get the offending garment out of the way, John’s hands helping, both of them giggling into the kiss as Sherlock’s long legs thrash his way out at last. “For God’s sake!” Sherlock says in exasperation, and that makes John giggle even more. 

Even in the moment, he can recognise it as the signal of him having actually relaxed and recharged during his long sleep, and it feels good. As fantastic as last night was, it’s nice to get to do this without the edges of shock, exhaustion, and even his relief at having found Sherlock and fixed things between them in the background. Now they can do this without him having to work at shutting the rest of it out. The night’s sleep has given it some distance. Now he’s distracted by Sherlock twisting around, reaching for something behind him. “What are you doing?” he asks. 

Sherlock’s lips compress a little in an expression that looks a bit uncertain, but his eyes are glinting. “I found – this,” he says. “When I was in the bathroom. I thought it might… be useful? It’s all there was.” 

‘This’ appears to be a small bottle of cheap hotel lotion, and John’s brain connects the dots rapidly. “Oh!” he says, privately tickled by Sherlock’s perception. “Catching on quickly, I see!” 

Sherlock’s mouth twists, his cheeks a bit flushed. “I just thought – ”

“No, yeah – good thought,” John hastens to assure him. “I mean – I’ve got nothing, like I said, and – yeah. Give that here?” 

Sherlock relinquishes the bottle gladly and John gets it open, very much aware of Sherlock’s intense gaze on him as he does so. “There is a great deal I have to learn,” he admits. “But I want to, John – I – ”

John glances up at him, his heart clenching at the uncertainty framing Sherlock’s mouth, and silently loves him more than ever. “Me too,” he says, the words catching in his throat. “We’ll – learn it together. Honestly, I can’t wait.” 

Somehow this seems to reassure Sherlock and his expression turned relieved. “John…” 

He moves closer in unspoken request and John doesn’t deny him, bringing their mouths back together, holding Sherlock’s face by the sharp angle of his jaw for the first few, intensely sweet moments of it, then surreptitiously letting go to get the little bottle uncapped, fumbling one-handed to get some of its contents into his palm. It works after a moment or two and he cups his palmful of it around Sherlock’s cock, locating it by its heat alone. Sherlock inhales sharply through his nose and kisses him all the harder. “Yeah?” John asks breathlessly, between feverish kisses, and Sherlock just makes a sound of fervent need into his mouth, his fingers finding John’s around him, smearing some of the lotion onto his own hand and then reaching for John in turn. 

It feels good – it feels _so_ good, and it’s only – no, there’s no ‘only’ about this, John thinks, cutting off the thought. This is – everything he’s ever needed or wanted. He pulls Sherlock onto him with both hands, the better to get his hands back onto the firm, perfect curves of Sherlock’s arse, and also to let him take the lead in case he wants it, let him set the pace. Sherlock makes a slightly questioning sound into his mouth, moving against him, and John makes one of wholehearted confirmation in return. The combination of the not-quite-sure-of-himself-ness, yet unmistakeable desire for him in every movement Sherlock makes is a knee-weakening one and John feels himself harden even more. Their cocks are pushing and sliding together, eased a little by the lotion, the artificial, faintly floral scent instantly imprinting itself on his brain as an aphrodisiac. There’s heat gathering between their bodies, Sherlock’s balls rubbing against his in a way that feels almost obscene and John in in heaven. He’s been fantasising about Sherlock for literal years in half-acknowledged, half-ashamed secret, but it never prepared him for the actual sensation of having Sherlock’s long, warm, lithely-muscled body spread out over his, for the incredibly human, earthy, visceral reality of his ability to be this aroused, the very hardness of his cock almost a shock. John can’t touch him enough, kissing him hungrily, sucking at his mouth like it’s air as they rock and pant and moan, the pleasure coiling up from his balls and spreading through him in silvery, breathless, glowing need. He’s gripping at Sherlock’s arse with both hands again, their rhythm perfect now. 

Sherlock is exhaling vocally, his breath hot on John’s face. “John – I’m – ”

John is right there with him. “God, yes, do it,” he pants. “I want to feel you – ”

Sherlock moans. “ _Ahh_ – John – !” His hips stutter forward, the rhythm breaking. John reaches down to take him in hand and Sherlock comes the minute he’s touched, his cock surging in John’s hand and then there’s wetness striping up John’s forearm and onto his chest. Sherlock gasps and spurts again and John keeps on touching him throughout, so turned on he can hardly breathe, the air turning to fire in his lungs. Sherlock’s hand is there, though, fingers curling him in a grip so perfectly tight that John almost whimpers. Still panting from the strength of his climax, Sherlock jerks him expertly, the very size of his hand adding even more fuel to the flame. On his sixth or seventh stroke, John’s breath chokes off in his throat and his hand closes around Sherlock’s and grips it hard as he loses control and shoots off absolutely everywhere. 

When he comes to himself, he feels dazed, still panting, stars fading behind his eyes. “Wow,” he breathes, the word coming out unfiltered. “Holy _shit_ , Sherlock.”

Sherlock is lying beside him, his face turned sideways on the same pillow, facing him, his body curled around John’s. He smiles. “That seems to have worked,” he says, that same impish quirk in the corners of his mouth. 

It reminds John a lot of the look on his face at Culverton Smith’s hospital, when he revealed the fourth recording device, and he has to laugh. “Something of an understatement, yeah,” he says. “It’s – honestly, Sherlock, this is better than – anything else. It’s like you know exactly how to touch me already.” 

Sherlock looks pleased. “Powers of observation?” he tries. 

“Something like that. Come here.” John reaches for Sherlock’s face and kisses him again for a long, really good moment. “I love you,” he says after, and a small burst of joy wells within him as he says it, as though every time he says it actively counteracts all the times he denied it, whether to himself or Sherlock or anyone else. 

Sherlock searches his eyes as though verifying this for himself, then says it back, the words low but very sure, and John’s heart clenches hard as they kiss again, the moment stretching itself out, suspended and utterly glorious. 

It gets interrupted when John’s stomach growls loudly enough to be heard in the next building and the kiss dissolves into juvenile laughter. “Oh, Jesus, I’m sorry,” John says, feeling a bit embarrassed. 

Sherlock shakes his head, still laughing. “No, of course,” he says, waving it off. “I thought last night already that you must be famished, but I didn’t even think of it once we got here.”

“And by the time we did, it’s not likely anything was open,” John points out. “Now that you mention it, though, I’m _starving_.” 

“When did you last eat?” Sherlock asks. 

John thinks. “Er, yesterday afternoon. Late afternoon. I got a sandwich in Batkovica, before I set out.” 

“Over twenty hours,” Sherlock says. He props himself up on one elbow. “Then here’s what I propose: we get dressed, go and see what this town has on offer for food, then discuss our next move. Let’s not try to make any major decisions on empty stomachs.” 

John smiles at him in gratitude. “That sounds perfect,” he says. “Have I got time for a quick shower?” 

“We have all the time in the world,” Sherlock assures him. “Go ahead. I’ll have a look at what’s on offer, and then maybe jump in quickly after you.” 

John agrees and sits up, looking around. “Okay. I wonder what I did with that phone.” 

“Oh – I found it in your pocket when I gave the lady your clothes and plugged it in to charge,” Sherlock says. He nods with his chin to the desk in the corner. “It’s over there.” 

“You’re brilliant,” John says, meaning it. He goes round to Sherlock’s side of the bed and bends to kiss him again, unable to stop himself now that he’s allowed. Maybe one more, then. He pulls himself with reluctance from Sherlock after. “I’ll be quick,” he promises. 

“Take your time. I’ll be here,” Sherlock tells him, smiling.

His curls are mussed from sleep and sex and sitting there in the bed, a corner of bedsheet only just covering him, he looks like a god. John has to actively resist the urge to just crawl back in on top of him.. Shower, he tells himself firmly, collecting the stack of his clean clothes and shutting himself in the loo. The hot water feels divine and he finds himself smiling as he washes the stickiness of their three rounds from his skin. If it’s started off this good, it will only get better, and that’s truly mindboggling thought. He wants to shout out and run around in circles and maybe cry, too – it’s all so unbelievably fantastic that he can barely process that it’s happening. He shuts off the water, brushes his teeth with one of the free toothbrushes on the counter, and gets dressed in a hurry, just wanting to be with Sherlock again. Even the flimsy door between them is too much right now. 

Sherlock looks up when he opens the door of the loo and smiles again, unwinding the sheet and getting up. Even soft, his cock is phenomenal, John manages to note, trying not to actively stare. “I found a few restaurant options,” Sherlock tells him, holding out his phone. “It looks like a lot of them are on the water and the weather is quite pleasant, twenty-four degrees. You choose.” 

John makes himself focus and takes the phone. “All right,” he says. “Any preferences?” 

“None whatsoever. My general thought was to eat something, anything, then get out of here and have ourselves a late dinner somewhere else entirely. Assuming you’re amenable, of course.” Sherlock ducks in to kiss him briefly on his way to the loo. 

“Entirely amenable,” John tells him, and Sherlock kisses him again, then pulls himself away with obvious reluctance that warms John to the core. 

“I’ll be quick,” he promises, and goes off to shower. 

They get themselves out of the small hotel under the wary eye of the same lady from last night (does she not sleep, John wonders) and out onto the rather charming streets of Višegrad. It was so dark when they arrived and he was so distracted earlier yesterday when he passed through that he didn’t even notice how beautiful the little town is. It’s nestled into the steeply rocky sides of several tree-covered hills, very much like the terrain he walked through yesterday. The town seems to spill over onto the far side of a river, attached by means of a long, rather pretty bridge. They find the restaurant John chose and get seated outside under a canopy, right at the water’s edge. The occasional boat goes by as they study the menus. They order ćevapi, which turn out to be pitas stuffed with lamb and beef sausages and sour cream, and share a leafy salad with it. There are also chopped raw onions in the pita, John realises a few bites in. A _lot_ of onions. “I should have brought that toothbrush from the hotel,” he says.  
Sherlock smirks at him. “If you’re trying to put me off, it won’t work,” he says mildly. “Besides, I’m eating the same thing.” 

John grins. “True enough.” They eat and watch the boats, and the food settles the sharp edge of hunger nicely. “So what’s the plan now?” John asks after Sherlock’s ordered them both coffee and some sort of small, fried pastries that he’s promised are delicious. 

“Well, I thought we could make one together,” Sherlock says. “We have options, obviously. If we want to go directly back to London today, we can do that. We could drive the rental to Sarajevo and get a flight by this evening, if you like.” 

John nods, but feels his mouth purse a little as he thinks about this. “I guess I assumed that was more or less what we would do,” he begins, not even sure where the sentence is going. 

Sherlock is watching him closely. “But?” he prompts after a moment. “We don’t have to do that, at all. There’s no rush. Rosie is safe with Kate Whitney. I contacted her this morning while you were asleep and got an update. Nothing new whatsoever, and she seems to be perfectly content, in good health and the rest of it. Would you prefer another option?” 

John winces a little. “That’s just it,” he says. “Rosie. I haven’t even had a chance to think about any of that.”

Sherlock nods. “Right. Of course you haven’t.” 

John thinks hard, attempting to search his own feelings and decipher what they are. It’s interrupted by the arrival of their coffee and dessert, the former served in tiny cups and very strong, the latter some sort of tiny, sugared doughnut. He takes a bite of one. “That’s delicious,” he says after, brushing sugar off his lips. “Okay: I think that what I’d really like to do is go somewhere else, somewhere big enough that we can leave as soon as we want to, and then talk through all of this together.” He catches a glimpse of the surprise Sherlock almost manages to hide. “It’s a big topic,” he points out. “And it involves you, very much. So I want you to be a part of whatever my thought process is.”

“True,” Sherlock acknowledges. “I was going to offer to get you to Sarajevo – or wherever else we choose to go – and give you some space to process it on your own. I’m very much aware that you’ve only just woken up and haven’t had any time to deal with any of this just yet. The ramifications of everything that happened yesterday, I mean.” 

John shakes his head. “That’s true. But I mean it – I want you part of it. And I know we could just start discussing it here, but it feels too close.” He doesn’t specify the village, but knows he doesn’t need to. 

Sherlock looks out at the water and nods. “Agreed,” he says. “All right: then step one is to put some more distance between ourselves and – there. Where shall we go? I suppose we should also consider that neither of us packed anything. Though we could always buy whatever we need.” 

“We could,” John agrees. He takes out the phone Mycroft gave him and opens the map app. “Hmm. How far would it be to Vienna?” 

“To drive?” Sherlock is amused. “Around nine hours, give or take.” 

“Ah.” John thinks again. “Then what about this: we drive to Sarajevo, maybe have dinner and spend the night there, then fly to Vienna in the morning. Or – you have a gun…” 

“Not an issue. It’s not mine – I arranged for it with the car,” Sherlock assures him, studying his face. “Why Vienna, specifically?” 

John shrugs. “I’ve never been?” he tries. “It just seems like a large, probably beautiful European city that I’ve never seen and might be just a slice less… well, foreign than Bosnia?” He eats another of the pastries and thinks again how delicious they are. 

Sherlock accepts this. “Very fair points,” he says. “Changing the atmosphere significantly would be useful. Agreed.” 

John hesitates, then adds, “Plus I don’t really know how much more, er, acceptable it would be to be walking around with you and holding hands in Vienna than it might be around here, but – it just feels like a touristy place like that might be more accepting. And I just – not that I want that, per se, but I’d like to feel like we’re able to, if we want that. And maybe it would be fine in Sarajevo. I don’t know.” 

Sherlock makes a thoughtful sound. “I don’t suppose anywhere is entirely ‘safe’, but I suspect you may be correct. Besides, we’ve already established that we want a significantly different environment.” He picks up his small cup of coffee and drains it. “You take the last one,” he says, nodding toward the last of the small pastries, looking around for their server and raising a hand. “I propose this,” he says, as their server comes over. “We drive to Sarajevo and fly immediately to Vienna. Why waste time?”

John takes the last pastry and feels himself smile, feeling a stirring of excitement almost as though they’re about to go on holiday. He knows it’s just to give him more time to figure himself out, but still feels exciting. He watches Sherlock’s brief exchange with the server in what sounds like impressively fluent language, then Sherlock takes out his wallet and hands over some bills. “Impressive,” John comments once the server has gone. 

Sherlock smiles. “Thank you. Finished?” 

John nods and gets to his feet. “I like your plan. Let’s go to Vienna!” 

*** 

It’s just after four when they arrive in Sarajevo, the two-hour drive pleasant enough. John navigates from his map app and Sherlock walks him through buying plane tickets on his phone. “Take my card,” he invites, when it comes to payment time, which involves a playful amount of groping Sherlock without distracting him too badly as he drives, leaving them both giggling and John having to clear his throat and attempt to calm his body down. He gets them to the airport with a minimum of wrong turns, an hour before their flight leaves. Sherlock left the gun in the glove compartment when abandoned the rental in a far corner of the parking lot, saying that he would let his contact know where it was. With no luggage, it’s a very quick check-in, leaving them time to get coffees and stroll around a bit to stretch their legs before the short flight. 

They arrive in Vienna a little after six, which is perfect. They take a taxi and John has a chance to marvel at Sherlock’s German, too, shaking his head a little. “Where are we going?” he asks, once the driver has pulled away from the kerb in front of the airport. 

“The old city, I thought,” Sherlock tells him. “I looked up a few hotel options and thought it would be nicest to stay somewhere right near the middle. That’s where all the most beautiful parts are, at least based on my research.” 

“You didn’t already make a booking?” John asks. 

Sherlock shakes his head. “I wanted to let you choose,” he says. 

John’s heart swells again. “I would have trusted your choice,” he says, reaching for Sherlock’s hand, which Sherlock lets him have. “But thank you for that.” 

Sherlock smiles. “We could have taken public transit,” he says, shifting the subject. “But then I wouldn’t have had a chance to show off my German in front of you.” 

John laughs at this, loving that Sherlock is still trying to impress him after all this time. “I _did_ notice,” he admits. He feels immensely content. “Okay: so the plan is, find a hotel, then… dinner?” 

Sherlock nods. “Dinner and exploration, I thought? And tomorrow, full tourist. I suggest we stay at least tonight and tomorrow, and not put any pressure on ourselves to discuss anything important. I’m very much aware that these things take time. There’s no rush, so – let’s just have a pleasant trip and if or when the subject comes up, we can talk about it at that point. And if we want to stay longer than two nights, we can, of course.” 

John leans into him, not even trying to stop the dreamy, loopy smile that’s spread itself unstoppably over his face. “Okay,” he says, and Sherlock’s fingers tighten in his. “Can we maybe buy some underwear or something?” 

Sherlock’s laugh comes out his nose. “Definitely,” he agrees. “We’ll do some shopping. Meanwhile, all of the hotels I looked at will have more than enough of the basic amenities. Though we may want some… supplemental materials.” 

He gives John a sly, slanted look with this that makes John’s blood rush southward. “We may indeed,” he manages, and Sherlock smirks at him. 

The taxi leaves them at what Sherlock tells him is the edge of the street that surrounds the old city. “This is where I propose we start,” he says, reaching for John’s hand again and taking it in a firm grip that says clearly that he doesn’t give a toss about who sees it. His entire, almost defiant lack of shame over it simultaneously warms John, strengthens his own feelings about it, and makes him feel a touch of shame all over again for all the years he denied this. 

There’s a broad street stretching out in front of them, surrounded on both sides by exactly the sort of opulent buildings that John imagined when he imagined Vienna. “Where is this?” he asks. 

Sherlock checks his phone with his free hand. “We’re currently standing at the corner of Friedrichsstrasse and Kärtner Strasse. This one seems to be the main drag of the old city. I propose we walk and casually scout hotels as we go.” 

“Agreed.” They set out, John looking around them like the gawking tourist he absolutely is, feeling happier than he’s got any right to. 

“Do you think you would prefer something quite sleek and modern, or something more along the lines of old world opulence?” Sherlock is asking, meanwhile. 

John considers this as they dodge a street car and cross the road. “Normally the first, but here, the second one feels more appropriate,” he says, and Sherlock files this away. 

They wander up Kärtner Strasse without any particular hurry, admiring the architecture. As it turns out, Sherlock’s never been to Vienna, either, which makes it a discovery for both of them in a way John likes. After a bit, Sherlock nudges them around a corner, then nods at the beautiful, large, white building in front of them. “What do you think of this?” he asks. 

The Grand Hotel Wien looks extremely posh just on the outside. “Can we go inside?” John asks. 

Sherlock gives him an indulgent smile. “Of course,” he says, and leads him in through the revolving doors. 

Inside, it’s so beautiful that John’s jaw nearly drops. The diamond-patterned marble floor and brass fixtures are gleaming on all sides, an ornately-carpeted wide staircase leading to the upper mezzanine curving out just above them. “Oh, wow,” he says, not even trying to filter it. He looks at Sherlock. “This one,” he states, and Sherlock starts to laugh. 

“We haven’t even compared our options,” he says mildly. “But if you like this one, it was at the top of my list, too.” 

“I mean – can we – afford it?” John asks, cringing a little. 

Sherlock waves this away dismissively. “Of course,” he says. “Let’s not even think about that. It’s not an issue. Let’s go and find out if they’ve got a room that suits us.” Still holding John’s hand, he strides breezily over to the reception desk and starts his conversation in English this time. The man on the other side of the counter is polished and professional and doesn’t even bat an eyelash at them. When he asks what sort of a room they’d like, Sherlock says, “Oh, a suite, I think. What have you got available?”

They’re nonetheless speaking a language that’s rather foreign to John and certainly to his normal budget, but Sherlock doesn’t seem to care at all. He and the desk agent agree on a senior suite, whatever that might be, and they’re given keys. John is slightly uncomfortably aware of the fact that they haven’t got luggage, which is made quite clear when Sherlock dismissively declines the offer of having their bags taken up for them, but there isn’t even the slightest crack in the agent’s professional veneer. It’s a bit of a relief. They turn and find their way to the lifts to explore their room. 

It’s absolutely ridiculous inside. John walks inside and his jaw drops again. “Good God,” he says in frank disbelief, and Sherlock puts his arms around his shoulders from behind, pressing his nose and lips into John’s cheek. 

“Do you like it?” he asks. “If it’s too much, I can go back and ask for something less… well, _less_.” 

The suite is the most luxurious thing John has ever seen, a far, _far_ cry from where they stayed last night. Everything is draped in a shade of dusty pink, satins and brocades and gold, actual chandeliers – multiples – hanging from the ceiling. He almost wants to cry for some reason. “I don’t know that we needed a dining room, but – it’s _gorgeous_ , Sherlock. I’ve never even _seen_ a hotel this nice before. I just – are you _sure_?” 

He can’t quite put it into words, but maybe his cringing doubt of being worth this treatment, of being worth Sherlock at all, is communicating itself all too well. Sherlock’s arms tighten around him, and when he speaks, his voice is low and almost shockingly tender. “Extremely sure,” he says, his lips pressing into John’s cheek. “Don’t – think what you’re thinking. I’ve never doubted anything less. You _are_ worth – this. Do you like it? That’s all that matters.” 

John swallows hard. “I love it,” he says, and turns himself around in Sherlock’s arms. He puts his own around Sherlock’s neck and kisses him hard, pushing down the self-loathing and trying to just accept the enormity of Sherlock’s love, of his acceptance of him, exactly as he is, his entire ugly history of horrible behaviour seemingly just wiped out and forgotten. 

After a little, they separate, Sherlock’s cheeks flushed, his eyes starry, and they explore the suite hand-in-hand, both of them pointing out its many ridiculously opulent features to each other in admiring tones. “Well, that’s the hotel decision out of the way,” Sherlock says. “Shall we head back to the streets and carry on exploring? And when we feel like it, dinner?” 

“Definitely,” John agrees. He checks the time. “It’s after seven now,” he points out. “I could eat.” 

“Dinner first, then,” Sherlock decides. “Let’s go and see what’s out there.” 

They make their way back to Kärtner and wander down the wide street in no particular hurry, pausing here or there to read a menu. Lunch and Bosnia already feel like they were a long time ago, and John is glad. He’s hungry. They admire the austere cathedral in the middle of the old city, then prowl around the narrower side streets until they find a Gasthaus that suits them. They both order wiener schnitzel and beer. John has his with spaetzle on the side, which prove to be some sort of extremely delicious noodle that he’s never encountered before, and Sherlock has his with a warm potato salad that comes with bacon in it. They trade bites and sips and everything is delicious, the hearty food satisfying John’s hunger perfectly. After, they share an enormous slice of apple strudel with whipped cream that’s served warm, the spices curling on John’s tongue. It’s just right – John feels immensely satisfied, but not grotesquely full. 

“Let’s explore a little more and walk some of this off,” he says, when Sherlock asks what he’d like to do next. 

Sherlock agrees and gets their bill. John manages to stop him before he can pay, though. “Why?” Sherlock asks, almost confused. 

John explains, leaning forward over the table and taking Sherlock’s hands in his. “Please. Let me contribute something, at least. You already got the plane tickets, that _palatial_ room – pardon me, suite – that we’re staying in. Let me at least get dinner.” 

Sherlock surrenders. “All right, then,” he says. “If you insist.” He smiles and releases John’s hands as the server comes over. 

It’s dark by the time they’re back out on the wide, square paving stones of the old city. They wander happily about, slowly making their way back toward the hotel. At Sherlock’s suggestion, they stop off in a little shop. Sherlock picks out a packet of underwear, which makes them both giggle. 

“We can share it. We wear the same size,” Sherlock says, with a serving of side eye that makes John’s blood tingle in anticipation that he can’t help at all. 

“True,” he says, finally allowed to admit that he’s been aware of this for years. “Do we need anything else? I mean… besides what we’ve got in the suite.” 

Sherlock gives him another of those delicious looks and nods toward another aisle. He stops, scanning over the products on offer, the German possibly slowing him down a little, then makes a selection. “Possibly… this?” he suggests, giving it to John to look at. 

John takes the small box and squints at the label, and makes out just enough that he’s got a pretty solid idea of what it is. Lube: Sherlock is proposing they buy lube. He swallows. “I thought that lotion worked pretty well,” he tries, which is meant to be a bit of a probe as to what Sherlock wants lube for. 

It works. “Yes, for what we did this morning,” Sherlock says a bit archly, glancing around them as he does. “But I was thinking that for more… in depth activities, it might prove rather necessary to have something more specifically suited to the task. If I may.”

John swallows again. His mouth opens, trying to figure out how to word his question. He’s open to anything, and if Sherlock wants – that – he would absolutely agree to it. But it would be nice to know. Somehow the words can’t quite get themselves organised, though. 

Sherlock’s mouth quirks impishly. “You look like you’ve lost your ability to speak,” he says lightly, but his eyes are glittering. He leans in, pulling John toward him by means of an arm wrapping itself around his shoulders, and speaks directly into his ear. “I’m not sure how to imply more delicately that I’d rather like for you to use that on me. _In_ me. If you’re amenable, of course.” 

John is still speechless. He reaches up and grips at Sherlock’s back and elbow and manages to look up into his face and nods, swallowing yet again. “Okay. Yeah,” he says, his voice cracking and coming out half in a whisper. “If you’re – ”

“I’m extremely sure,” Sherlock cuts in, mercifully. “I suppose it could be the other way if you’d like. I just assumed this would be your – preference.” 

John shakes his head. “No – I just – I wasn’t expecting it to – er, escalate so quickly. I’m very down for this. Definitely!” 

Sherlock looks overtly triumphant. “Good,” he says. “In that case… maybe these, too. We can talk about whether or not we want them later, but we might as well have them in case. This size, I think.” He selects a box of what are definitely condoms, then finds John’s hand again and tugs him over to the counter to pay for their illicit purchase. 

Back out on the street, John adjusts their hands so that their fingers are woven together, feeling so giddy that he can hardly believe this is real. The village feels like a distant nightmare. That they’re going back to their enormously opulent suite in that hotel built for probably royalty or people along those lines, all with the intent of _that_ – it’s hard to even take in. “Okay, when does someone slap me in the face and tell me to wake up?” he asks, leaning into Sherlock as they turn the corner onto the street where their hotel is. 

Sherlock’s fingers tighten in his. “I feel the same way,” he admits. “I know in my head that it’s all worked out, somehow, that we really do have this – all the evidence is there, and yet – ”

“And yet it just feels hard to believe,” John agrees. They shuffle through the revolving doors in the same compartment, both giggling, then make for the bank of lifts. 

Inside, Sherlock glances up at the security camera, then backs John into a corner regardless and unzips his jacket. “This is a nice shirt but I can’t wait to take it off you again,” he says, his voice dropping and it goes straight to John’s cock. 

“Even clean, I can’t wait to get it off, after four days in a row now,” John says, fighting to make sense even as Sherlock’s mouth descends onto his jaw. 

“We can buy you a new one tomorrow.” Sherlock sounds like he doesn’t care at all. The lift pings and slows at their floor, and they nearly sprint down the corridor, John winning the race to get his key card out first. “Hurry!” Sherlock commands, and John jams the card into its slot. 

They stumble inside, kissing breathlessly and gripping at each other’s sleeves. “Mm – Sherlock – ” John can’t quite bring himself to stop kissing Sherlock long enough to talk. It takes at least two more efforts before he manages it, Sherlock making a questioning sound into his mouth. John pulls away and licks his lips. “I just – I was thinking, last night was phenomenal, absolutely everything I wanted. And I didn’t want to slow it down in any way, so – but I was also quite aware of how disgusting I felt. Would you mind terribly if this time, I took a quick shower first? Between the plane and all the walking and that, I’d – yeah. I’d just like to shower and shave and generally feel a bit fresher tonight?” 

Sherlock blinks and nods. “Of course,” he says. “Whatever you want. Maybe I will, too, then. After you.” 

“I’m sorry,” John says, feeling idiotically guilty about this. “I don’t mean to keep you waiting. I just – ”

“No, I quite understand,” Sherlock assures him. He draws a fingertip over the four-day stubble on John’s cheek. “Not that I was complaining. But I do understand. And – given what I suggested, I think it would be a good idea on my part, too.”

He gives an impish smirk and John feels a wave of relief and kisses Sherlock again in lieu of knowing the right thing to say to convey it. One more, then he pulls away. “Okay. I’ll be quick,” he says. 

“Take your time,” Sherlock tells him. “I’m not going anywhere.” 

John throws him a grateful look, and hastens into action. He finds a thick, soft robe and takes it with him into the fancy, marble-laden loo. He hasn’t got any toiletries of his own and doesn’t plan to be wearing much after, so it’s easy. He steps into a shower large enough to accommodate seven or eight people and washes himself with luxurious-smelling products as quickly as he possibly can, ignoring the hopeful early stages of his erection firmly. After, he brushes his teeth, then shaves his face with equally-expensive smelling things and watches himself in the mirror of this palatial suite and wonders how the hell his life just got so incredibly good. He pats aftershave onto his cheeks. Enough: Sherlock is waiting for him. He rinses the brand new razor and leaves it on the counter, deliberates for a moment, then leaves the robe where it is on a hook and goes out with just the towel around his waist. 

He finds Sherlock sitting on the sofa in the main room, the top few buttons of his shirt undone casually, one leg crossed over the other at the knee. He looks relaxed and debonair and John wants to crawl onto him and _devour_ him. Sherlock looks up, then uncrosses his legs and gets up, his eyes gleaming as they travel over John’s bare torso. He comes around the coffee table without a word, his eyes on John’s. His hands settle on John’s hips, warm even through the towel, and his eyes are intense. “This is – extraordinary,” he says, his voice low. “I find myself constantly doubting that this is genuinely happening.” 

“Me too,” John says honestly. “Every minute, Sher – ” He’s cut off by Sherlock’s mouth, their tongues pressing together and Sherlock’s arms come around him like wings, surrounding him completely. John’s erection goes from partial to nearly full in seconds, arousal prickling through him like flame. He’s grasping at Sherlock’s back and thinks desperately that he needs to be touching Sherlock’s skin directly. “Go shower,” he gets out a moment or two later, and Sherlock makes a low, hoarse sound of profound agreement. 

“I’m going,” he says, though his eyes have dropped to John’s mid-section. “Although…” 

He drops to his knees in one fluid motion, his hands still on John’s hips. “What’s your turn-around time, generally?” he asks, looking up at John through glittering crescents, all pretended innocence. 

John can hardly breathe. “With you around to – inspire it? Pretty damned quick, I would think…” 

“Because I need to have you in me,” Sherlock tells him, so matter-of-factly that that alone is a massive turn-on. His thumbs rub over the edge of the towel. “But I also _very_ much need to try this.” 

John feels himself weakening acutely. “It would be… very hard to deny you that,” he says, the words coming out with difficulty. 

Sherlock’s laugh is low and more sensual than it has any right to be, given his general lack of experience with all this. “Then don’t,” he says. His long fingers pluck the towel open easily, letting it drop to the floor, and John’s erection springs free with almost embarrassing enthusiasm. Sherlock looks at it with open satisfaction. “This,” he says admiringly, “is perfect. And – I don’t know what I’m doing, but I trust that you’ll correct me if I get it wrong.” 

He doesn’t wait, leaning forward and pulling it to his mouth, his lips closing around the head and causing John to immediately suck in a lungful of air and stuff his knuckles into his mouth lest he shout. It feels so good that he nearly passes out, and Sherlock’s only just started. “Not much chance of that!” he gasps out, and Sherlock hums into his flesh in pleased-sounding response. “Oh God. Oh _God!_ ” He stands there, naked and still-damp from the shower, in the middle of this big, incredibly posh room, and Sherlock is kneeling in front of him, sucking his cock. It feels so much like a ridiculously unbelievable fantasy that he almost wants to cry. It feels so, _so_ good – what Sherlock is doing is exquisite, his curly head bobbing along John’s length like he’s done it thousands of times before, knowing exactly what John likes, how fast and how tight to keep his lips, his tongue cupping around him from below in a way that’s positively ungodly. He can hear himself panting, both hands in Sherlock’s hair now, trying not to grip or steer or thrust into his mouth. He doesn’t even need to – Sherlock is taking him unstoppably into ecstasy. His hands are busy, too, one wrapped around John’s cock, the other travelling over his arse and hip and thigh. John feels a telltale shiver of pleasure like quicksilver right at the base of his balls and has the wit to stammer out a warning – “Sh – I’m – I’m going to – ”

Sherlock just hums in acknowledgement but only pulls back partway, his fist going harder, lips tightening, and that does it. John does shout as he comes, his cock spasming in the heat of Sherlock’s mouth and then he’s spilling himself there as the pleasure pulses through him like electricity, his entire body going stiff for it. His head is thrown back, his mouth open as he pants through it, coming to himself a moment later. Sherlock gives him a last lick, then sits back on his heels, lips pressing together a little. “Was that – all right, then?” he asks, looking oddly shy considering his seeming confidence throughout the whole thing. 

John holds out his hand and Sherlock allows himself to be pulled to his feet. John slips his arms around Sherlock’s waist and looks up into his eyes. “Possibly the best thing I’ve ever experienced,” he says, meaning it with his entire being. “I’ve got no idea how you’re already so good at that on your first go, but I hope I can make it even half as good for you when it’s my turn.” 

Sherlock looks relieved and the shyness dissolves again. “I suppose time will tell,” he says breezily, and puts his mouth to John’s again. 

John kisses back hard enough to taste himself in Sherlock’s mouth and pulls Sherlock’s clothed form up against his nudity, his hands hungry for him. “Go and shower,” he says again. “I need to touch you. So badly.” 

Sherlock swallows. “That makes two of us,” he says. “I won’t be long.” He lets go of John with obvious difficulty, then makes for the loo. 

John looks around the suite. What should he do to get things ready? He spots the bag with their purchases and brings it into the bedroom. He turns down the linens, then adjust the lighting to make it more romantic. Next he deals with the packaging, getting things open and ready. The box of condoms is also labelled in French and English, he discovers. Sherlock chose size large for him, and this makes his chest swell with idiotic pride. Without much else to do, John wanders back out into the sitting room, finds their phones, and plugs them into the chargers already provided. The water in the shower shuts off, and a few moments later, the door opens and Sherlock walks out. He hasn’t got a stitch on, and he’s hard, his curls tousled and damp, and John swallows. The sight of Sherlock is the most beautiful thing he’s ever laid eyes on and he can’t even bring himself to speak. 

Sherlock comes over to him, his heart beating visibly through the flushed, pale skin of his chest. He stops when he’s two metres from John, his eyes rooted to John’s, and the moment feels so charged that John’s throat is tight. “Take me to bed,” Sherlock requests, and all John can do is nod and swallow again. 

“Yeah,” he gets out, and it feels inadequate, but in the end, it’s enough. 

It feels like a scene out of a film, John thinks blurrily as they stumble into the ornate bedrooms. He closes the door, still kissing Sherlock as deeply as he knows how, cocooning them in privacy. If he’d thought it might be awkward or complicated, he was wrong. It feels natural, every part of it, from searching out every corner of Sherlock’s body, touching every inch of his skin with his lips and hands and tongue, taking him into his mouth for the first time, the dusky salt tang somehow already piercingly familiar. This taste belongs to him and him alone, he knows, and the thought makes his chest throb fiercely. Sherlock is writhing and panting above him, and when his voice rises, John lets up. He shifts upward to claim Sherlock’s mouth again, curling his hand around Sherlock’s cock in replacement. It’s an easy thing to get his fingers slicked up, a condom rolled jointly onto him, their fingers tangling, to feel his way into Sherlock’s body, feeling every minute reaction on Sherlock’s part in his mouth, in the way his breath stutters. It only takes murmurs of exchange, question, affirmation, again with each new step, and by the time Sherlock opens his eyes, John is harder than granite. 

“Now,” Sherlock says, his voice shot through with breath. And then, “ _Please_. I need you.”

John nods, feeling his own breath rush out of his lungs. “Yeah. I need you, too.” 

“John – ” Sherlock grasps for him, pulling him down on top of him, face-to-face, and if that’s how he wants it, John isn’t about to refuse him. 

His eyes are on Sherlock’s as he enters him, pushing slowly into the agonising, glorious tightness of him, Sherlock’s body clenching and spasming around his cock in a way that’s got him actually whimpering, more than a little afraid that he’s about to lose it right then and there. John bites his lip hard, his eyes squeezing shut, and rallies. He wants so badly to make this good for Sherlock. He gives them both a minute, letting Sherlock’s body adjust to the intrusion of him. Sherlock’s breath and face are both tight, the sounds he’s making in his throat somehow making John love him even more. “Just keep breathing,” he says, aware that he needs to take his own advice. “That’s it.” He feels closer to Sherlock than he’s ever felt to anyone else, ever, the feeling surging over him almost overwhelmingly. Sherlock opens his eyes, his expression unusually open, and John sees all of that same closeness reflected there. He lowers his mouth to Sherlock’s again, revelling in it. For the first time in his life, he doesn’t feel like he’s putting on some sort of show, trying to make it romantic for the person he’s with. It just _is_ this romantic. He’s kissing Sherlock because he needs to, and Sherlock’s kissing back every bit as passionately. John feels drunk on the heady intimacy of it, of being so completely joined to Sherlock like this. 

Slowly, Sherlock’s body begins to relax a little, allowing him in. Still checking in every step of the way, John begins to move a little, pulling out an inch or so, then pushing back in, feeling every ounce of give in minute detail. Sherlock is breathing hard, his eyelids at half-mast. When he begins to moan, his fingers pulling at John’s skin, John starts going a little harder. Sherlock exhales hard. “ _Oh_ – that’s – ahh!” 

John smiles down at him. “Yeah?” 

“Yes!” Sherlock is beginning to sound frantic. “You can – you can go harder, if you – oh!” 

The sounds he’s making are pure aphrodisiac and John can’t even help obeying the request. He’s thrusting in a steady rhythm now, his hips pumping forward, rocking into Sherlock. Sherlock’s hands are all over him, gripping his arse hard enough to leave marks, and that extra stimulus has John panting vocally. Their bodies are slapping together now and Sherlock’s voice is rising higher and higher – John reaches down between them and grips Sherlock’s cock, stroking roughly, and Sherlock shouts out and spurts in his palm, his cock jerking, and John is lost. He gets Sherlock through his peak, and only when he’s stopped coming does he allow himself to keep going. 

“Yes, John – yes!” Sherlock gasps out, and that’s it – he comes in an orgasm so strong it feels like he’s going to shake him apart, his body turning itself inside out within Sherlock, pulse after pulse of heat flooding out of him. 

He comes to himself some time later, his entire body still trembling from the strength of it, and Sherlock’s hands are stroking down his heaving back over and over again. The driving need is gone, but in its wake the need to bond remains, this intimate, sweaty, skin-to-skin contact fusing them together. He feels himself softening at last, and reaches down to hold the condom in place as he pulls out, not wanting to make a mess. There’s a bin next to the bed, so he disposes of it and turns back to curl himself around Sherlock’s long, blissfully relaxed form in unabashed possession. Sherlock’s arms fold around him in equal claim and John feels his chest well with happiness he didn’t know he was capable of feeling. “I love you,” he says, and Sherlock’s arms tighten. 

“Stole my line,” he murmurs sleepily, and John feels himself huff out a breath of laughter. 

“Didn’t,” he contests, turning his face a little to press his lips to Sherlock’s neck. He thinks again how every saying of it feels like a small burst of healing. For both of them, maybe. He resolves then and there to say it at least once every day for the rest of their lives. Maybe even right away, right now. “It’s true. I love you.” 

Sherlock turns his head to press his lips lingeringly to John’s forehead. “I know,” he says, his voice low and very gentle. “I love you, too. And this – that was exactly that. Love. That’s what it felt like.” 

“It’s what it was,” John tells him simply, raising his head to look into Sherlock’s eyes again, and Sherlock searches his and nods. 

“Yes,” he says, and that’s all that needs saying for the time being. They lie there in each other’s arms, their bodies coming down from the high, and eventually, they sleep. 

*** 

John wakes in the early dawn hours. It comes as very slight surprise to find himself naked and in the loose hold of Sherlock’s arms, but he remembers and happiness blooms all over again. Last night was phenomenal and he lies there for a moment, just reliving it. He wonders what time it is and realises he needs the loo. He shifts carefully, not wanting to wake Sherlock, and extracts himself with success. Sherlock doesn’t even move, his face unusually relaxed in sleep, limbs heavy and unresisting. John slips out of the bedroom and into the fancy loo to relieve himself.

The clock on the marble counter says that it’s a little after five. John quietly washes his hands and examines his face in the mirror. He looks better than he did in the mirror of the Bosnian hotel. Sleep and happiness have both helped immensely. As he stands there, though, his smile fades and he knows that the moment has come to face reality – the rest of reality, he amends. This incredible thing with Sherlock _is_ real, however fantastical it still feels. The rest of reality, then: it’s time he made some decisions, or gave the whole thing some serious thought at the very least. He dries his hands and goes back into the bedroom. He knows he told Sherlock that he wanted them to decide about this together, and he meant it. Whatever happens in the future is going to have a huge affect on Sherlock, obviously, and he deserves to have some say in that. That said, Rosie is ultimately John’s responsibility. He’s got to at least figure out how he’s feeling about the whole thing. 

He sits down in an ornate chair near the foot of the bed. It’s covered in that same apricot-pink silk that the rest of the suite has been decorated in and feels sensually smooth against his bare skin. He crosses one knee over the other and gazes at Sherlock’s sleeping form. He’s sleeping deeply, his breathing soft and slow and even. John sits there for a long time and lets the gentle sound of it soothe him. He’s still very tired, himself, but knows in his gut that the time has come to face this thing. Putting it off could be excused with his desperate search for Sherlock after the whole thing with Mary, with their flight from Serbia, the late night and their need to be together at last, and then the transfer to Vienna, their mutual desire for a decidedly more romantic night together than the previous one in Bosnia. But now as it’s though a switch has flipped and it can’t be put off any longer: he’s got to think about Rosie. 

Rosie. As the minutes spin out, John lets himself see her small face in his mind’s eyes, the way it looks in one of her many, spontaneous laughs, or when she’s sleeping. The weight of her, when she’s fallen asleep in his arms. The exasperation- and worry-inducing sound of her wails when she’s gone and clonked her head against something. A deep ache of love for her wells within him, more fiercely than he might have expected, and with it comes a heaviness of heart that he sees now is the reason he hasn’t wanted to think about this. Is he her father or not, then? What if he isn’t? What would that mean? A few moments later, it occurs to him to wonder who it might be, if it’s not him. He doesn’t even particularly care about that bit, but – what then? Does he owe it to that man, whoever he might be, to offer to give him Rosie? He would be a total stranger to her. Does this hypothetical man even know that he has a child? Would he want her? The legalities of it all would probably be quite complicated, but is there a moral obligation on John’s part to find out the truth for the potential real father’s sake? For Rosie’s? 

He thinks about it for a long time. He could go back to London, find Mycroft, and demand to be given the truth now that the option of getting it from Mary is gone. What if Mycroft were to give him a name, contact details – would he really go knocking on some stranger’s door to say some version of _Hey, you might know me as the husband of the woman you slept with about two years ago. Turns out you’re the actual father of our child, so I’m wondering if you want her now that you know?_ It sounds preposterous. Then again, if someone unexpectedly showed up and told John that he’d fathered a child without knowing it, would he want to know about it? He rather thinks he would. He’d never really wanted to have kids, didn’t see himself as the sort who would, somehow, but if it turned out that he did and didn’t even know it, he’d want to be told. Given the option, at least. And yet the man would be a stranger to Rosie. She knows _him_ , knows his face, his voice – knows that he’s her father. Or – thinks he is, at least. He’s also the only remaining parent left who Rosie knows, whether or not he has a biological relationship to her. 

John sits there, the indecision twisting in his gut like snakes. It’s painful. His eyes are still resting on Sherlock’s peaceful form, his face relaxed as he sleeps, and his heart gives a fierce throb. He wouldn’t do anything to jeopardise what they’ve finally got, finally sorted out. It’s the very best thing that’s happened to him by a wide margin. He loves Sherlock fiercely and he refuses to even contemplate a future without this, without Sherlock. He wants it to go on forever. But this isn’t a trivial matter. Rosie is a whole person, no matter how young. She’s not a puppy to be given away because it’s become inconvenient. He loves her. He might not have wanted a kid, but there she is, and he does love her. The thought of giving her up to some unknown person is painful. He’s quite sure that Sherlock would never ask it of him – would probably be horrified at the thought, honestly. He’s always been very affectionate with Rosie. Nonetheless, it’s a very different thing to watch her for an hour or two, and to live with a small child full-time. There are risks that come with life at Baker Street, risks that John himself has faced and survived – just. They aren’t something he wants for his daughter – if she even _is_ his daughter. 

Resolution fails to come. It’s six now, and John yawns. It’s too big a decision to make on his own, but at least he’s had some time to look it all in the eyes at last. He gets up and pads over the thick carpet and crawls back into the big, luxurious bed. Sherlock makes a sleepy sound but otherwise doesn’t stir as John gathers his heap of loose limbs back into his arms, pushing a foot between Sherlock’s bony ankles and blows a stray lock of his hair off his lips. Maybe clarity will come later. When they talk about it together, possibly. _Together_. The words lingers in John’s mind and he falls asleep smiling over it, the feel of Sherlock in his arms incredibly precious. Yes: they’ll figure it out together. 

*** 

They wake together in the mid-morning, blinking and chuckling a bit, legs rubbing together under the expensive linens, and then Sherlock rolls onto him and pins him to the bed, his palms on John’s, their fingers tangling together as they kiss, bodies moving together. There’s a breathless exchange, the addition of a very hasty palmful of the lube they bought, and then it’s even better. It doesn’t take all that long, but that doesn’t matter – John shouts out as he comes, letting himself go first for the first time since this started, gives himself half a second to recover, then shifts down to engulf Sherlock’s cock with his mouth, determined to finish what he started last night, and also just because he wants to taste Sherlock again, taste _all_ of it this time. Sherlock moans, not curbing himself as John sucks and sucks, his head bobbing over him. He puts all ten fingers into John’s hair, the warmth of his large hands cradling John’s skull in a way that feels particularly intimate, somehow, his thighs tightening around John’s sides. When he gasps out John’s name a few moments later, John gets it and sucks all the harder, then backs off a little and uses his hand to get Sherlock the rest of the way there, fist pumping over him and slapping Sherlock’s cock onto his tongue. Sherlock’s entire body arcs off the bed as he comes, his voice loud and almost desperate, the breath choking off as his body shoots out hot spatters of release. Ready for it, John swallows and swallows, rubs Sherlock’s cock a little more, licking at him until he seems to be spent and sags back onto the sheets. 

He’s shaking all over, flushed and panting, and John thinks he’s never looked so attractive. “Good morning,” he quips, turns his head to plant an obscene kiss directly onto the soft hair of Sherlock’s balls, then shifts back up to drape himself half onto and half beside Sherlock. His cock is softening where he’s pressed up against Sherlock’s hip, still aching pleasantly in the aftermath of his own orgasm and he feels fantastic. 

Sherlock huffs out a breath of laughter. “Quite. That was… extraordinary.” 

Pleased, John smiles into his jawline and presses his nose and lips there. “I loved doing it. I couldn’t wait to try it again. But all the way this time.” 

“I have absolutely no objections to where things went last night,” Sherlock tells him, smiling, though his eyes are closed. “In fact, I seem to remember having requested that fairly explicitly.” 

John remembers it again, a visceral thrum of it echoing somewhere deep in his balls. “It was incredible. _You’re_ incredible.”

Sherlock opens his eyes, smiling into his and looking happier and younger than John’s ever seen him look. He answers with his mouth instead of verbally, which is just fine. 

Eventually they get up and shower, jointly this time. It’s a new experience for Sherlock, which John finds piercingly touching, somehow. They dress and chat about the day, making loose plans. Breakfast, they decide, or possibly brunch by the time they get out and about, and Sherlock proposes they follow that by playing tourist. John agrees happily, dressing himself in a pair of their brand new underwear and his very much overly-worn clothes, and then they’re out on the pavement. It’s a warmly sunny day and Sherlock reaches for his hand without hesitation and John lets himself take it, almost daring anyone to cast dubious side-eyes in their direction. No one does, though. No one seems to care at all. 

“Shirts,” Sherlock decides, nodding toward a shop, and they go inside and buy themselves a new shirt apiece, or rather Sherlock does. John chooses a comfortable jersey pullover in a shade of blue that Sherlock says brings out his eyes, and likes it so much that he keeps it on and puts his five-day shirt into the bag with Sherlock’s new one. 

Next, they go to Café Central, which Sherlock insists is a mandatory stop, and when they arrive, John sees why. It’s a spacious, circular room with marble columns and table tops and a high ceiling, vastly more ornate than any café John’s been in before. They both order the Café Central breakfast, which is a riot of breads, pastries, meats, cheese, and scrambled eggs, and it’s all delicious. John sips his coffee with whipped cream and wonders for a private moment whose life he’s living, even as he listens and nods as Sherlock tells him about Trotsky coming here to play chess. After, they visit St Stephen’s, the famous cathedral right in the middle of the old city, then consider their options and debate between Schönbrunn Palace, Hofburg Palace, and the Belvedere Museum. Eventually they decide on the Hofburg, since it’s the closest. They wait in the queue, then wander through the stately, beautiful halls of the palace. Afterwards, they find a park nearby and stroll through that, too. 

“Would you ever want to live in a palace?” Sherlock asks curiously, still holding his hand as they follow the paved path. 

John begins to laugh. “What, me, in a place like that? Hardly seems like my scene. Nah. Bit too rich for my tastes.” Suddenly he wonders if Sherlock was actually doing a light probe, trying to lead somewhere else. Maybe he should just bring it up, then, head-on. “You know… of all the places I’ve lived, the only one I’ve ever really loved and the one I’ve been happiest at is Baker Street. That’s all the ‘palace’ I’d ever want or need.” 

Sherlock looks at him. “Have you thought at all about what you’d like to do, once we get back?” he asks, his expression a bit careful. 

John nods. “I’d like to move back in, if you’ll have me,” he says, very directly. “I was kind of hoping you would.” 

“Yes, of course,” Sherlock says at once. “I hope you never doubted that.” 

John shakes his head. “I didn’t. But that means we’ve got to talk about this now.” 

Sherlock nods as though he was expecting this. He indicates a bench with his chin and they go over to it and sit down. “I wasn’t going to bring it up,” he says, still sounding rather cautious. “I knew that the timing had to be right. It’s – important.” 

John frowns a little. “Which bit, exactly?” 

Sherlock is looking straight ahead, his expression too controlled to read. “Rosie, of course,” he says. “I think we’re on the same page as far as the rest of it is concerned. About you and me, that is. The only question is Rosie.” His fingers are still linked into John’s and he moves them a little, turning his head to look John in the eyes. “So,” he says, then waits. 

There’s no impatience, though, no drive for an answer. He simply waits for John to sort out whatever it is he needs to say. It takes him a long time. His eyes fall on the people walking or jogging by. “It’s hard to know what to think,” he says after a little. “Or feel.” 

“Do you… want to say any of it?” Sherlock asks. “It needn’t be – cohesive. Or… complete, I suppose. You could just… think out loud, see where you land in the end.” 

“I want you to be a part of it, though,” John says firmly. “I mean that, Sherlock. It’s a big deal. It affects you a whole lot. So let me just say that part right here and now: I have no intention of ever depriving either of us of this, ever again. Which means that you’re a part of this decision.” 

Sherlock doesn’t try to argue this. “All right,” he says, a bit uncertainly. “Can I ask what you’re thinking about the paternity question? Or how that’s… affecting your thoughts or feelings about the rest of it?” 

John swallows. “That’s the million-pound question, isn’t it,” he says, his mouth dry. He turns his face in Sherlock’s direction. “Can I ask you something first? I’m not stalling, but – ”

“It’s all right,” Sherlock assures him. “What is it?” 

John hesitates a little. “Mycroft,” he says, and feels Sherlock stiffen only just perceptibly. “You’ve… disowned him? As in, decided not to consider him your brother anymore?” 

Sherlock angles his chin down toward his knees. “Yes.” 

He’s a trifle distant, but his fingers are still woven into John’s and he doesn’t pull them away. “Can I ask how you’re feeling about that?” John asks, feeling curious. They haven’t talked about any of this yet, so absorbed in each other and little else. 

For a long moment, Sherlock doesn’t answer, the crease appearing at the bridge of his nose. “Still very angry about the whole thing,” he says eventually. “Sufficiently angry that I haven’t even let myself think about it.” 

“Are you still, I don’t know… sure?” John asks. “It’s fine if you are. It’s no great loss as far as I’m concerned. But he’s your brother. Your only brother, and considering your only other sibling… I don’t know. I mean, I get it: I haven’t had a relationship with my mother in over fifteen years, and you know how things are with Harry. I quite understand. But with Mycroft, the two of you have occasionally had bouts of functional relationship in there.” 

“Between rounds of his uninvited and unwelcome manipulation of my life, you mean,” Sherlock says, rather sharply, though John knows that the sharpness isn’t directed at him. 

He concedes this. “Fair. Very fair.” He rubs his thumb over the nail of Sherlock’s. “But you don’t think you’d ever miss him? Or… I don’t know, regret how it might make things in your family? I’m not suggesting you do anything differently,” he hastens to add. “Just – checking. Sometimes people’s feelings change with some time.” 

Sherlock shakes his head. “What he did was unforgiveable,” he says shortly. “It would have cost you your life. I would have lost you forever. He sent you into a trap, knowingly. With no exit strategy.” 

“True,” John admits. “Very hard to argue that point.” He hesitates, then says, “He did help us, though. He helped me. If he hadn’t told me that you were still there, in the village, I might not have found you. That means a lot to me. Not that I’m trying to tell you how you should feel or what I think you should do about him, if anything. That’s your call.” He shifts the subject slightly. “The condition of his help with tracking Mary down was that I not come back to England, though he might soften on that now that we’re together…”

“Never mind that,” Sherlock says dismissively. “I won’t allow him to be a problem.” 

John raises his eyebrows. “No?” 

“No,” Sherlock says firmly. “I forced him to give me your whereabouts at gunpoint, you know. It’s not something I imagine he’ll have forgotten just yet.” 

John is impressed. “Wow. No, I don’t suppose so,” he agrees. He imagines the scene vividly, and it’s rather vindictively satisfying to picture Mycroft’s irritating superiority being shaken that way. In the meantime, he owes Sherlock an answer to his question. “About Rosie… I don’t know. I just don’t know what to think. I guess I wonder if I have a duty to tell her real father, if that’s not me. But – I mean, what would that even look like? Would I just – hand my daughter off to some random man who impregnated my fiancée-at-the-time? Someone who doesn’t even know Rosie, who I know nothing about?” He shrugs helplessly. “I don’t know. I don’t know what the legal or moral obligations are. If it were me, I think I’d want to know if I had a kid. And maybe I owe it to Rosie to allow her to know her real father. If I’m not him, I mean.” 

Sherlock digests this. “All right,” he says. “For a moment, let’s leave that part aside. Do you _want_ to be Rosie’s biological father? Do you want that to be the truth of the situation?” 

John struggles mightily, a hard lump forming in his throat. For a long moment he can’t speak as the thoughts and emotions eddy and tangle in his head and heart. Then he nods, his throat tightening all the more. “But even if I am – I know how complicated that would make everything, and I – ” He stops, still fighting the emotion. It’s taking him aback slightly by its sheer strength. Is it just the fear of losing Rosie to a stranger?

“Never mind that,” Sherlock tells him, turning his head to put his lips to John’s hair. He speaks softly, his voice low and warm. “We can sort that aspect of it out. As far as I see it, the only question that truly matters here is the question of whether or not you want to be Rosie’s father. And I think you just said that you do.” 

John nods, the feeling finally emerging a little more clearly. “Yeah.” His voice cracks on the word and it comes out in a whisper. He clears his throat. “I think I do. I don’t – it doesn’t even make sense to me, when I was so reluctant about every part of it, but – ”

“Emotions aren’t rational,” Sherlock says. He does pull his fingers out of John’s now, but instead he wraps his arm around John’s shoulders and pulls him closer. “And there’s a child involved, a child to whom you’ve been a parent – and now her only living parent.” 

“A shit parent,” John says, still feeling guilty over it. “But – yeah. I really thought I was her father, obviously, so the thought of suddenly not being that… I don’t even know. I mean, it’s not like I would stop feeling like she was my kid just because I found out otherwise, you know?” 

“Of course,” Sherlock says. “I don’t particularly care about the legal or moral implications of it, if you want to know. Unsurprising, perhaps, but there it is. I only care about what you want.” 

John struggles internally. “But what if it turns out that I’m _not_ Rosie’s father? What if that comes out down the line and she hates me for not having told her, or for not having given her the chance to know her real father? Do I owe it to her to find out? I mean – I kind of thought I did. That was at least half the reason I came here in the first place. Or – to the village, I mean.” 

Sherlock thinks this over. “I suppose that’s a fair consideration.” 

“And – I mean, what would it mean for us, to have a kid at Baker Street?” John asks, hating that he’s even saying it, but it needs to be acknowledged. “You _know_ how hard that would be. Those nights when we get called out to a case. Would one of us always have to stay home? We couldn’t ask Mrs Hudson to just wake up in the middle of the night to look after her. She’s older and she needs her rest. It’s one thing to ask her to watch Rosie for an hour or two in the afternoon, but nights are different. Besides…” John hesitates a bit, then makes himself ask it. “We haven’t even talked about this part of it, but – I mean, if we’re together and we have my daughter – if she is that – at Baker Street, does that mean that I’m essentially asking you to be a parent to Rosie, too? Do you… would you even want that? I mean, the same thing could be said of you – that it’s one thing to ask you to watch Rosie here and there, but a _very_ different thing to ask you to take on parenthood just because we’re together now.” 

Sherlock doesn’t answer right away, obviously processing this. His arm is still around John’s shoulders, his thumb rubbing lightly against the soft material of the new shirt. “It _is_ a rather momentous thing, when you put it that way,” he says eventually. “And you’re not incorrect about the complications that having a young child with us would pose. However, if this is the – not ‘cost’, but – the reality of what it would mean for us to have a life together, then I’m more than willing to do whatever it would take, John. I’ve always known that I would do whatever it took to allow you to have the life that you want. I just – if that could include me, that’s the only thing I would ask. I would do anything with and for you. Including to raise this child with you – as her parent, if you would trust me with that role.” 

John finds himself unwittingly thinking of Mary, what she said that night in the narrow passage in the empty house in Leinster Gardens. There’s a startling contrast between what she said then and what Sherlock has just said: Mary told Sherlock that she would do anything to keep him, specifically in keeping him from knowing the truth about her. _There is nothing in this world that I would not do to stop that happening_ , she said, meaning about losing him. In contrast, Sherlock has just said that he would do anything with him, anything for him – not to keep John chained to him, but to allow him to have this, enable their life together. And Sherlock _has_ already done all of that: jumped off a building without knowing he would survive, just to keep him alive, put himself into voluntary exile after, and then again after Magnussen. In comparison, maybe this isn’t nearly as much to ask – for the small ‘price’ of being kept in John’s life this time. His throat grows tight. “You’re incredible, you know that?” He can barely get the words out. 

Sherlock looks intently into his eyes. “I don’t know about that. But if this is what you want, then it’s what I want. As to the question of the paternity itself… if you want to know my opinion, I think it need not ever be known. You are the only man who has ever been a father to Rosie, and the thought of giving her to some stranger is preposterous. You’re who she knows. You don’t ‘owe’ her anything other than this truth: that you _are_ her father if you choose to claim that role. If some paper somewhere says that someone else happened to contribute his genetic material to the process, what of it? That’s not what makes a parent. If you choose the reality that you are Rosie’s father, then you are. It’s as simple as that, at least in my view.” 

John’s throat closes all the way now, and his eyes sting with unexpected tears. He can’t seem to speak for a long time, fighting the emotion. “Do you really think so?” he manages at last, and Sherlock’s response is reassuringly certain. 

“Yes. Without a doubt,” he says firmly. 

John looks at him through the glassy film obscuring his vision, not trying to hide it. The tears slip down over his cheeks and he knows with utter certainty that they’ve found their answer. “I love you,” he says, meaning it from his very gut. 

Their faces are already very close, Sherlock’s arm cradling him almost protectively. “I love you, too,” he says, his voice low, and after that he puts his other arm around John, too, wholly ignoring the other people in the park, ignoring all of Vienna around them, and bending to claim John’s mouth again.

John surges into him, fusing himself to Sherlock, one hand on his face and the other gripping the back of his coat and the rest of the world disappears. Nothing else matters: not the nightmare of the village or the years of pain that led to what happened there, nor the distortion and ugliness of all of the stuff he and Sherlock could never seem to name between them until now. It’s been said now, and all of the obstacles have disappeared at last. There’s nothing left to keep them from having this: from having the rest of their lives together. A little while later, John pulls back, his heart beating so hard that he knows Sherlock can feel it. “How many nights did you book the suite for?” he asks. 

Sherlock touches his tongue to his lower lip. “I’m expected to think of something as mundane as a hotel booking right now?” he asks, but it’s playful, the crease John loves appearing at the bridge of his nose. 

He grins. “Just try.” 

Sherlock thinks. “Two. Last night and tonight. I wasn’t sure how long you might want.” 

“Tell you what,” John says. “Let’s keep it for another two. I want to do this holiday thing properly. Before we go back to London and sort out all of the practicalities we’ll need to put into place to make this thing work. Let’s just – give ourselves a tiny slice more time before all of that.” 

“All right,” Sherlock says, not objecting. “I’d like that, too.” 

John feels almost delirious with happiness, the weight of the Rosie question finally lifted. They’re going to keep her. He is her father, and he’s got all the time in the world to figure out how to be a better one than he has been so far. And Sherlock will be there to help, to share the work of it and be his partner in it. He can’t even quite take in how much it is that Sherlock’s offered to be a parent to Rosie, himself. It’s enormous. And it means that they’re in this for the long term, definitely. Should he propose, possibly? Yes. Maybe. Later, John tells himself. “So what’s next, then?” he asks, bringing himself back to here and now, in Vienna. With Sherlock. (Incredible. Unbelievable. But true!) 

Sherlock’s got an answer ready. “Now we need to eat some cake,” he states. 

Somehow, this is funny to John. “That’s – very specific,” he says. “Any particular cake? Not that I’m objecting.” 

Sherlock smiles at him, the smile sunny and full of openness. “Yes, as it happens,” he says. “There’s a century-old rivalry over the invention of the Sachertorte, which is a chocolate cake with layers of apricot jam. Apricots grow locally, of course. As I understand it, nearly every restaurant or café offers it, but the two principal rivals are the Hotel Sacher – obviously – and Café Demel. I propose we try them both and choose a winner.” 

John laughs. “I love it,” he says. 

Sherlock gets to his feet and pulls John to his. “In that case, the Hotel Sacher is just across the way,” he says, nodding toward it. “Shall we start there?” 

John agrees and fits his fingers back into Sherlock’s. “Lead the way,” he says, and they go. This is perfect, he thinks, feeling immensely satisfied with how life has very suddenly turned itself around. They’ll give themselves this little holiday. Later on, he’ll call Kate Whitney and give her a head’s up. They’ll sort out how to make it all work, at Baker Street. When this is done, they’ll go back to London, get Rosie, and then they’ll go home. Together, at last. 

But first, they’ve got to go and try some cake. He can’t wait. 

*** 

Mycroft manages to keep his expression perfectly still when the knock comes. This time he knew it was coming; his agents upstairs alerted him and he gave them the green light. Nonetheless, this is unexpected and he feels rather unsure of himself. “Come in,” he says, internally relieved at how neutral his voice sounds. 

The door opens and Sherlock walks in. He looks well, Mycroft notes immediately: his eyes are clear and he looks ten years younger. He looks less worn, the lines around his eyes eased in a way Mycroft hasn’t seen before. Sherlock is drawn up to his full height, his lips pressed together, his bearing almost forbidding in his coat. For a moment, he just stands there, looking down at Mycroft and Mycroft waits. Sherlock has to be the first one to speak. He’s the one who’s come here after having disowned him nearly three weeks ago: clearly he’s got something to say. 

The moment stretches out, tense and uncomfortable. “Thank you for seeing me,” Sherlock says stiffly. “I know you knew I was here.” 

Mycroft gives a slight nod. “Unlike last time. Yes.” 

Sherlock ignores this and glances around the dimly lit office, his eyes immediately tracking over the various cameras. His eyes return to Mycroft’s. “He’s alive, you know,” he says, rather sharply. “No thanks to you.” 

Mycroft accepts this without flinching. “Yes. I surmised as much.” 

Sherlock’s eyes narrow. “Were you watching?” he asks, the question blunt, his voice hard. 

Mycroft swallows. “No. Not once you left the village.” 

For a moment, Sherlock doesn’t seem to know how he wants to respond to this. “But you _were_ watching to that point. I mean, I knew you were: John phoned you. I know that. What I find difficult to believe is that you ever stopped the surveillance.” 

Mycroft looks down at the polished surface of his desk. “Regardless, I did,” he says quietly. “Not the child. It’s only because of that that I knew you had returned to the country. Both of you. But once you crossed the border into Bosnia – yes. I called off all surveillance. You told me to stop interfering.” 

“Yes, I did,” Sherlock says, still sharp. “I never thought you actually _would_ , though.” 

Perhaps this is the opportunity, then: the one he really didn’t think he would get. Mycroft takes a deep breath, then makes himself look up at Sherlock. “I’m sorry,” he says, and if it comes out rather quietly, at least it’s firm. “Truly, Sherlock.”

Sherlock’s lips whiten with suppressed anger. “For which part?” 

Mycroft opens his mouth, then stops to recalibrate. “For all of it,” he says at last, and it’s difficult. “I… have had the opportunity over these past weeks to come to the realisation that our respective interpretations of what might have been best for you are very different. I don’t suppose we’ll ever agree on many of those points. However, I also acknowledge that it was not my place to… attempt to decide that for you. On your behalf.” 

“No,” Sherlock tells him, his eyes still hard. “It wasn’t. It never has been.” His mouth is set. “Go on.” 

He is unrelenting, but Mycroft acknowledges with an inward grimace that Sherlock has the right of it: there is more which he must say. “I apologise with specific regard to John,” he says, churning the words out as though carving them from stone. It’s difficult and deeply unpleasant. 

“For?”

Sherlock isn’t going to let it go at that. He’s going to force it all out. Mycroft grits his teeth internally and resigns himself to it. “For deliberately sending him into harm’s way. For sending him without an exit strategy,” he says, doggedly owning it. After, he wanted this chance, he reminds himself. This apology is more than due. “For – potentially having deprived you of him. For his own sake, too. It wasn’t my call to punish him over his treatment of you.” 

“No, it wasn’t. And there’s no ‘potentially’ here. She would have killed him, Mycroft,” Sherlock tells him, his eyes boring into Mycroft’s. “I got there only just in time.” 

Their eyes are locked together, Mycroft unable to look away. “I’m – glad you did,” he says, the words barely audible. 

Their eyes hold together for another moment or two, exquisitely tense and charged. Then Sherlock seems to decide to accept this. “So am I,” he says. His tone is still cool. He releases Mycroft from the eye lock at last and takes a few steps around the office, his hands in the pockets of the coat. “There are a few things that you should know. First, Mary is dead.”

He turns to register Mycroft’s reaction. Mycroft nods. “Yes. By your hand.” 

“You saw that.” It isn’t a question. 

Mycroft inclines his head. “Yes. For the record, I’m – satisfied with how that came about. That it did come about.” 

“What has become of the body?” Sherlock is watching him intently, and Mycroft recognises the unspoken test, the trap within the question. 

“I don’t know,” he says honestly. “I told you: I stopped watching.” He clears his throat. “If it had been anywhere else, I might have sent someone in to remove any evidence that might have led back to you. However, I assume you used a weapon that cannot be traced back to you in any way.” He doesn’t wait for Sherlock to respond, intending it as a testament to his belief in Sherlock’s capabilities and intelligence. “I don’t know what will happen to the remains. Perhaps the remaining locals will find it. Perhaps not: that village has seen more than its share of death – death which she brought about. I fail to see how one more body would stand out or call for investigation – if there’s anyone even left to investigate.” 

“There isn’t,” Sherlock says briefly. He turns and resumes his slow wander, as though perusing an exhibit in a museum. “John and I are together,” he says, not looking at Mycroft. “Possibly not a surprise to you, given his call.” 

Ah. He had wondered about that, seeing them arrive at Kate Whitney’s house jointly. “Not wholly surprising, yet nonetheless welcome news,” Mycroft says, the formality shielding his wrong-footedness somewhat. Difficult to offer congratulations, given the fact that he’s only just apologised for having deliberately attempted to have John killed at the hands of his own wife. 

Sherlock smiles, directing it at a framed securities certificate on the wall. “He’s moved back into Baker Street. He and Rosie both.” 

This is less expected. “Is that… wise?” Mycroft asks cautiously, and Sherlock rounds on him. 

“I don’t recall having asked for your commentary,” he says sharply. “We’ve hired a nanny. Giles Jenkins. He’s ex-military, from John’s division, medical corps. He’s been vouched for and vetted. We’ve already begun renovations on 221C. He’ll live there as on-call overnight care and keep an eye on Mrs Hudson, too. We’ve considered the situation from every possible angle and we’ve done our homework.” 

Mycroft retreats swiftly. “I see,” he says, the words sounding rather small. Sherlock’s sharpness still stings, but he reminds himself to be grateful that they’re conversing at all. “Are you merely telling me in order to fill me in on your current circumstances?” he asks stiffly. 

For the first time, Sherlock pauses. His eyes fall to the level of Mycroft’s desk. After a moment or two have passed, he speaks. “You’re correct in what you said: about it not having been your right to make decisions about my life on my behalf, particularly without my input. However… I can acknowledge that I have nonetheless benefited from your… oversight. Your help. More than once. There was a time when I might have died without it. I do know that. And for that… I do thank you.”

Mycroft is so startled that he doesn’t know what to say to this. He feels his lips part, but no words emerge. 

Sherlock looks at him for a moment, his face intense. Then he goes on. “I also acknowledge your apology and accept it. I wasn’t sure whether or not you would be willing to own it.” He exhales a little. Whatever he’s trying to say is taking him some effort, Mycroft notes. Sherlock closes his eyes briefly, then looks directly into his again. “I’d like to take some of what I said back. About your… interference. The fact is that there’s a child now, a child that I plan to help John raise. That changes everything. She is vulnerable. The measures we’re taking are considerable, but the fact remains that we simply lack the resources to keep her as safe as we need to. If it’s not too late, I – we – would like to ask for your help in that regard.”

Mycroft is careful not to react outwardly. He blinks, then nods. “Consider it done,” he says quietly. “Whatever you need. I will… wait for your explicit instructions before proceeding.” 

Sherlock fights internally, his head dropping forward. He nods. “Thank you,” he says, the words charged. 

“What about me, then?” Mycroft asks, breaking the silence that follows. 

Sherlock’s brow creases and he looks up again. “What about you?” 

Mycroft gives a gesture he would be hard-pressed to define. “Are we still brothers, then? Or am I merely a random intelligence agent you happen to know? Is that what I am to you?” 

Sherlock shakes his head. “We’re not ‘still’ brothers,” he says. “But – we could make that ‘again’, if you’re asking for a second chance.”

Mycroft swallows. “I am,” he says, the humble admission costly him rather dearly. (This is precisely why he’s always avoided this type of vulnerability.) 

Sherlock looks at him for a long time, then nods. “All right,” he says, looking off to one side. “I’ve come to learn the value of second chances, myself.” 

Mycroft understands. “I’m glad for you,” he says. “I mean that, Sherlock.”

Sherlock smiles again, just a little. “There’s one more thing,” he says. “The paternity records: I assume that they really do exist and that you have them.” 

Mycroft nods. “The sole copy.” 

“No electronic records?” Sherlock’s eyes are on his. 

He shakes his head. “I ensured that only the paper copy remained.”

Sherlock seems satisfied by this. “Good,” he says. “Destroy it.” 

Mycroft raises his eyebrows, taken aback by this. “Sherlock – ”

“I mean it.” Sherlock cuts him off. “John is Rosie’s father. He always has been, and no amount of differing biology will change that truth. It’s the only truth we’re concerned about, regardless of what your paper records might say. We have made this choice: to be Rosie’s parents. Nothing else matters. I trust that you will never let whatever those records say past your lips, even if it’s merely to confirm that John _is_ the father. We don’t want to know.” 

Mycroft feels startled. He truly never considered an interpretation of the matter beyond biology. It’s an interesting take. (He reminds himself that his opinion on the subject has not been invited.) “You have my word,” he says. He withdraws a small set of keys from his inside jacket pocket and unlocks the bottom drawer of his desk. He selects the necessary file and takes it out, envelope and all. Next, he stands and walks over to a well-used shredder on the shelf behind him. He switches it on and feeds the entire document through, then empties the shreddings into the secured disposal bin, aware of Sherlock’s eyes on him the entire while. When it’s finished, he turns around again and returns to his seat. “I do not have access to this,” he says, indicating the bin. “Nor does anyone else on my staff.” 

Sherlock nods. “Thank you,” he says again. “In that case… I’ll be in touch regarding the security arrangements. John will want to be a part of that conversation.” He turns to go, walks over to the door, then stops.

Mycroft waits. 

“All of those years, I was wrong,” Sherlock says quietly. “I was wrong to believe everything you used to tell me about sentiment being a weakness. Friends being a liability, something that would slow me down. Love being a chemical defect found on the losing side. I was wrong to believe you that allowing it to compromise me would be a fatal error, when the truth is that the fatal error would have been _not_ to. I understand now why you said it. Why you probably believe it, yourself. Eurus damaged us – all of us. But you were wrong, Mycroft.” 

Mycroft doesn’t know how to respond to this, so he just sits there, waiting warily and not interrupting. 

“You don’t need to understand it,” Sherlock says, turning back now, and there’s something almost like compassion on his face. Compassion for _him_. It makes Mycroft feel deeply unsettled. “I’m sure that you _don’t_ understand it, understand why anyone would do this. You see only strategic weakness and risk. It _is_ a risk. I won’t deny that. To open oneself to another person this way is an enormous vulnerability. But he’s making the same risk, Mycroft, trusting me even to the point of allowing me to raise his child with him. The pay-off of this level of trust is possibly beyond your comprehension. I’m not asking you to try to comprehend. Only to respect it.” 

Mycroft swallows, then nods. “Understood.” 

Sherlock hesitates, then reaches into his right coat pocket. “I have something for you. It’s from John,” he says. “I’ll let you read it on your own.” 

He walks over and lays a small, white envelope on Mycroft’s desk. Mycroft eyes it as though it might contain a letter bomb. “All right,” he says cautiously. 

Sherlock gives a real smile this time. “I’ll be in touch,” he says, and it’s a promise this time. 

He goes, leaving Mycroft alone with the envelope. He picks it up and turns it over in his hands. John Watson’s letters have something of a legacy of leaving destruction in their wake and he rather wonders if this one be will be the same. The envelope bears his first name, nothing more. He opens it with slightly unsteady fingers and withdraws the single, folded sheet within. It says: 

_Dear Mycroft,_

_Since you’re reading this, it means that your talk with Sherlock  
went well. I’m glad._

_I wanted to thank you for your help in the village. Everything that’s  
happened since that point wouldn’t have been possible without it,  
and I’m grateful. I don’t know what you’ll think of this, but you  
can refuse if you want to. The fact is, we’d like to ask you to be  
one of Rosie’s godparents, if you’d be willing. If you’re going to  
be providing her with so much support, I think the recognition of  
your role in her life is important to acknowledge. You once  
trusted me with the care and responsibility for your brother, and  
I failed miserably. With your help, I’ve received yet another  
chance, and this time I’m going to prove myself worthy of it. In  
turn, I’m trusting you with one of the most important people  
in my life. I’ve also failed her, and I intend to stop doing that. I’m  
hoping to gain your trust by showing you that I can do better, and  
by giving you mine. You don’t have to let us know right away.  
Either way, thank you. _

_John Watson_

Mycroft reads the short letter three times in succession, his fingers still irritatingly unsteady. The silence in the office deepens around him. He has no idea what time it is. (It doesn’t matter.) He is left with the impression that Sherlock has become something greater than he ever could have predicted. He has evolved – possibly beyond Mycroft. He was wrong. About both of them. The thought feels extremely recriminating. 

He gets up after a long moment and goes to the safe where he stores electronic data. He selects the USB key that houses the footage from the hospital morgue, then crosses back to stand in front of the shredder and pauses there, thinking. Was John the making of Sherlock, then? Or was Sherlock his own making? The dubious notion occurs that perhaps it was the transformative nature of love, a mysterious force that he’s never particularly cared to attempt to comprehend, that was behind this change that’s brought about Sherlock’s growth into a fuller and better version of himself than Mycroft’s ever known – one that was even willing to reconcile with him, maybe one day even forgive him. He’s been given a second chance at having a relationship with his only brother, the value of which cannot be calculated. 

He may never understand it fully. Regardless, he places the file containing the footage in the secure disposal bin.

It’s time for a fresh start. 

*

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this story almost entirely during my three months of working in isolation from home. My work became the in-depth research of a failed civil uprising/revolution and a horrific level of destruction in that country. The unnamed village of the title (“sine nomine” = Latin for “without name”) is very much based on some of the events of that uprising, though this is set in a very different country. This story had already been plotted out well before I started this research, but some of what I was thinking and feeling about that situation is definitely reflected here, and I was grateful to have the vehicle of this story to help process some of that.


End file.
